- concise, node.js style API for WebRTC
- works in node and the browser!
- supports video/voice streams
- supports data channel
- text and binary data
- node.js duplex stream interface
- supports advanced options like:
- enable/disable trickle ICE candidates
- manually set config and constraints options
This module works in the browser with browserify.
Note: If you're NOT using browserify, then use the included standalone file
simplepeer.min.js. This exports a SimplePeer constructor on window.
npm install simple-peer
Let's create an html page that lets you manually connect two peers:
<html>
<body>
<style>
#outgoing {
width: 600px;
word-wrap: break-word;
}
</style>
<form>
<textarea id="incoming"></textarea>
<button type="submit">submit</button>
</form>
<pre id="outgoing"></pre>
<script src="bundle.js"></script>
</body>
</html>var Peer = require('simple-peer')
var p = new Peer({ initiator: location.hash === '#1', trickle: false })
p.on('error', function (err) { console.log('error', err) })
p.on('signal', function (data) {
console.log('SIGNAL', JSON.stringify(data))
document.querySelector('#outgoing').textContent = JSON.stringify(data)
})
document.querySelector('form').addEventListener('submit', function (ev) {
ev.preventDefault()
p.signal(JSON.parse(document.querySelector('#incoming').value))
})
p.on('connect', function () {
console.log('CONNECT')
p.send('whatever' + Math.random())
})
p.on('data', function (data) {
console.log('data: ' + data)
})Visit index.html#1 from one browser (the initiator) and index.html from another
browser (the receiver).
An "offer" will be generated by the initiator. Paste this into the receiver's form and hit submit. The receiver generates an "answer". Paste this into the initiator's form and hit submit.
Now you have a direct P2P connection between two browsers!
This example create two peers in the same web page.
In a real-world application, you would never do this. The sender and receiver Peer
instances would exist in separate browsers. A "signaling server" (usually implemented with
websockets) would be used to exchange signaling data between the two browsers until a
peer-to-peer connection is established.
var SimplePeer = require('simple-peer')
var peer1 = new SimplePeer({ initiator: true })
var peer2 = new SimplePeer()
peer1.on('signal', function (data) {
// when peer1 has signaling data, give it to peer2 somehow
peer2.signal(data)
})
peer2.on('signal', function (data) {
// when peer2 has signaling data, give it to peer1 somehow
peer1.signal(data)
})
peer1.on('connect', function () {
// wait for 'connect' event before using the data channel
peer1.send('hey peer2, how is it going?')
})
peer2.on('data', function (data) {
// got a data channel message
console.log('got a message from peer1: ' + data)
})Video/voice is also super simple! In this example, peer1 sends video to peer2.
var SimplePeer = require('simple-peer')
// get video/voice stream
navigator.getUserMedia({ video: true, audio: true }, gotMedia, function () {})
function gotMedia (stream) {
var peer1 = new SimplePeer({ initiator: true, stream: stream })
var peer2 = new SimplePeer()
peer1.on('signal', function (data) {
peer2.signal(data)
})
peer2.on('signal', function (data) {
peer1.signal(data)
})
peer2.on('stream', function (stream) {
// got remote video stream, now let's show it in a video tag
var video = document.querySelector('video')
video.src = window.URL.createObjectURL(stream)
video.play()
})
}For two-way video, simply pass a stream option into both Peer constructors. Simple!
To use this library in node, pass in opts.wrtc as a parameter:
var SimplePeer = require('simple-peer')
var wrtc = require('wrtc')
var peer1 = new SimplePeer({ initiator: true, wrtc: wrtc })
var peer2 = new SimplePeer({ wrtc: wrtc })- Friends - Peer-to-peer chat powered by the web
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Create a new WebRTC peer connection.
A "data channel" for text/binary communication is always established, because it's cheap and often useful. For video/voice communication, pass the stream option.
If opts is specified, then the default options (shown below) will be overridden.
{
initiator: false,
channelConfig: {},
channelName: '<random string>',
config: { iceServers: [ { url: 'stun:stun.l.google.com:19302' } ] },
constraints: {},
offerConstraints: {},
answerConstraints: {},
reconnectTimer: false,
sdpTransform: function (sdp) { return sdp },
stream: false,
trickle: true,
wrtc: {}, // RTCPeerConnection/RTCSessionDescription/RTCIceCandidate
objectMode: false
}
The options do the following:
initiator- set totrueif this is the initiating peerchannelConfig- custom webrtc data channel configuration (used bycreateDataChannel)channelName- custom webrtc data channel nameconfig- custom webrtc configuration (used byRTCPeerConnectionconstructor)constraints- custom webrtc video/voice constraints (used byRTCPeerConnectionconstructor)offerConstraints- custom offer constraints (used bycreateOffermethod)answerConstraints- custom answer constraints (used bycreateAnswermethod)reconnectTimer- wait __ milliseconds after ICE 'disconnect' for reconnect attempt before emitting 'close'sdpTransform- function to transform the generated SDP signaling data (for advanced users)stream- if video/voice is desired, pass stream returned fromgetUserMediatrickle- set tofalseto disable trickle ICE and get a single 'signal' event (slower)wrtc- custom webrtc implementation, mainly useful in node to specify in the wrtc packageobjectMode- set totrueto create the stream in Object Mode. In this mode, incoming string data is not automatically converted toBufferobjets.
Call this method whenever the remote peer emits a peer.on('signal') event.
The data will encapsulate a webrtc offer, answer, or ice candidate. These messages help
the peers to eventually establish a direct connection to each other. The contents of these
strings are an implementation detail that can be ignored by the user of this module;
simply pass the data from 'signal' events to the remote peer and call peer.signal(data)
to get connected.
Send text/binary data to the remote peer. data can be any of several types: String,
Buffer (see buffer), TypedArrayView (Uint8Array,
etc.), ArrayBuffer, or Blob (in browsers that support it).
Note: If this method is called before the peer.on('connect') event has fired, then data
will be buffered.
Destroy and cleanup this peer connection.
If the optional onclose parameter is passed, then it will be registered as a listener on the 'close' event.
Detect native WebRTC support in the javascript environment.
var Peer = require('simple-peer')
if (Peer.WEBRTC_SUPPORT) {
// webrtc support!
} else {
// fallback
}Peer objects are instances of stream.Duplex. The behave very similarly to a
net.Socket from the node core net module. The duplex stream reads/writes to the data
channel.
var peer = new Peer(opts)
// ... signaling ...
peer.write(new Buffer('hey'))
peer.on('data', function (chunk) {
console.log('got a chunk', chunk)
})Fired when the peer wants to send signaling data to the remote peer.
It is the responsibility of the application developer (that's you!) to get this data to
the other peer. This usually entails using a websocket signaling server. This data is an
Object, so remember to call JSON.stringify(data) to serialize it first. Then, simply
call peer.signal(data) on the remote peer.
(Be sure to listen to this event immediately to avoid missing it. For initiator: true
peers, it fires right away. For initatior: false peers, it fires when the remote
offer is received.)
Fired when the peer connection and data channel are ready to use.
Received a message from the remote peer (via the data channel). JSON strings will be
parsed and the resulting Object emitted.
data will be either a String or a Buffer/Uint8Array (see buffer).
Received a remote video stream, which can be displayed in a video tag:
peer.on('stream', function (stream) {
var video = document.createElement('video')
video.src = window.URL.createObjectURL(stream)
document.body.appendChild(video)
video.play()
})Called when the peer connection has closed.
Fired when a fatal error occurs. Usually, this means bad signaling data was received from the remote peer.
err is an Error object.
The simplest way to do that is to create a full-mesh topology. That means that every peer opens a connection to every other peer. To illustrate:
To broadcast a message, just iterate over all the peers and call peer.send.
So, say you have 3 peers. Then, when a peer wants to send some data it must send it 2 times, once to each of the other peers. So you're going to want to be a bit careful about the size of the data you send.
Full mesh topologies don't scale well when the number of peers is very large. The total
number of edges in the network will be 
where n is the number of peers.
For clarity, here is the code to connect 3 peers together:
// These are peer1's connections to peer2 and peer3
var peer2 = new SimplePeer({ initiator: true })
var peer3 = new SimplePeer({ initiator: true })
peer2.on('signal', function (data) {
// send this signaling data to peer2 somehow
})
peer2.on('connect', function () {
peer2.send('hi peer2, this is peer1')
})
peer2.on('data', function (data) {
console.log('got a message from peer2: ' + data)
})
peer3.on('signal', function (data) {
// send this signaling data to peer3 somehow
})
peer3.on('connect', function () {
peer3.send('hi peer3, this is peer1')
})
peer3.on('data', function (data) {
console.log('got a message from peer3: ' + data)
})// These are peer2's connections to peer1 and peer3
var peer1 = new SimplePeer()
var peer3 = new SimplePeer({ initiator: true })
peer1.on('signal', function (data) {
// send this signaling data to peer1 somehow
})
peer1.on('connect', function () {
peer1.send('hi peer1, this is peer2')
})
peer1.on('data', function (data) {
console.log('got a message from peer1: ' + data)
})
peer3.on('signal', function (data) {
// send this signaling data to peer3 somehow
})
peer3.on('connect', function () {
peer3.send('hi peer3, this is peer2')
})
peer3.on('data', function (data) {
console.log('got a message from peer3: ' + data)
})// These are peer3's connections to peer1 and peer2
var peer1 = new SimplePeer()
var peer2 = new SimplePeer()
peer1.on('signal', function (data) {
// send this signaling data to peer1 somehow
})
peer1.on('connect', function () {
peer1.send('hi peer1, this is peer3')
})
peer1.on('data', function (data) {
console.log('got a message from peer1: ' + data)
})
peer2.on('signal', function (data) {
// send this signaling data to peer2 somehow
})
peer2.on('connect', function () {
peer2.send('hi peer2, this is peer3')
})
peer2.on('data', function (data) {
console.log('got a message from peer2: ' + data)
})If you call peer.send(buf), simple-peer is not keeping a reference to buf
and sending the buffer at some later point in time. We immediately call
channel.send() on the data channel. So it should be fine to mutate the buffer
right afterward.
However, beware that peer.write(buf) (a writable stream method) does not have
the same contract. It will potentially buffer the data and call
channel.send() at a future point in time, so definitely don't assume it's
safe to mutate the buffer.
If a direct connection fails, in particular, because of NAT traversal and/or firewalls, WebRTC ICE uses an intermediary (relay) TURN server. In other words, ICE will first use STUN with UDP to directly connect peers and, if that fails, will fall back to a TURN relay server.
In order to use a TURN server, you must specify the config option to the SimplePeer
constructor. See the API docs above.
MIT. Copyright (c) Feross Aboukhadijeh.