Setting up a Raw WebSocket Client
Explore how to create a raw WebSocket client in .NET to connect to a SignalR Hub. This lesson guides you through project setup, configuring the WebSocket protocol, handling the handshake in JSON, and processing incoming messages. You will learn essential methods like ReceiveAsync and decoding message buffers to manage WebSocket communication effectively. By understanding these steps, you gain the skills to implement a SignalR client even when official support is not available.
Overview
We've now covered all SignalR client types that Microsoft officially supports. But what if the technology we want to use is not on the list? Also, what if there is no way to write a SignalR client, and we need to connect an existing WebSocket client to it?
The good news is that we can connect a raw WebSocket to the SignalR Hub. And once it is connected, we can easily see the structure of the messages that are being exchanged. This will allow us to write our own SignalR client implementation in any language of our choice, as WebSocket is a standard protocol, which we can write code for in any language. But today, we will focus on the .NET implementation of it.
Setting up the WebSocket client
We will create another project and call it ... ...