Summary

Server Sent Events (SSE) support for express/connect.

Why SSE and not WebSockets/socket.io? Because:

• it's based on pure HTTP
• works with elastic beanstalk load balancer, proxies like nginx, etc.
• it'll run your middleware chain normally in express/connect, just like for any other HTTP request (ie. authentication, setting up locals etc.)
• you don't need to store any state, everything happens in stateless http request (no need for redis backed state, even for load balanced environment)
• much simpler than WebSockets

What is it good for?

• any server generated push notifications
• one-off, long running tasks that you want to have progress indication for

Installation

npm install tiny-sse --save

Usage

sse = require 'tiny-sse'

...

app.get '/foo/bar', sse.head(), sse.ticker(seconds: 15), (req, res) ->
  sse.send(event: 'foo', data: 'Hello')(req, res)
  req.end()