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WebRTC Conductor

A lightweight ES6 module to allow for efficient and simple management, creation, reuse and destruction of WebRTC DataChannels - independent of the signalling channel used for negotiation.

Presently, the module is extremely unstable and is functional up to the point where I can use it with a small amount of difficulty in my projects. Over time, I will fix and extend this module as needed.

Overview

One of the main goals of this library is to decouple the signalling channel used to initialise WebRTC connections from the management library itself - a move that I'm surprised no other library appears to have taken a transport-agnostic approach like this.

To connect to another peer:

//Assuming the existence of a channel implementation, FooChannel(webSocketAddr){...}
var Conductor = require("webrtc-conductor");

var myConductor = Conductor.create({
  channel: new FooChannel("ws://somesite.com:9999")
});

myConductor.onconnection = /* Function handling connections made to this system. */;
 
myConductor.connectTo(/* String containing your partner's id. */)
  .then(
    result => {
      //Code handling the connection.
    }, reason => {
      //Code handling a failed connection attempt.
    }
  );

Channels

Although these are properly detailed in src/example_channels/structure_example.js, a rough description is as follows:

function FooChannel(param){
	// A reference to the bound manager.
	// You may call:
	//	_manager.response(msg, channel):			alert the manager that a response 
	//												has been received, and delegate
	//												parsing it to the given channel.
	//
	//	_manager.renameConnection(name1, name2):	inform the manager that it must
	//												change a channel's name - typically
	//												used for bootstrapping into a
	//												P2P network.
	this._manager = null;

	// Internal ID used by the registry of the manager to help find
	// registered channels by name.
	this.internalID = "structure_example";

	// Function called by manager when opening a new WebRTC Data Channel. This function
	// is used to convert webrtc negotiation details into a form suitable for the
	// channel, as well as sending this information along the channel.
	this.send = function(id, type, data){
		/*...*/
	};

	// Function called by the manager if the _manager.response(msg, channel)
	// method is called. This function is used to parse and handle the data
	// actually received, and interpret what class of message has been received.
	this.onmessage = function(msg){
		/*...*/
	};

	// An optional function called by the manager once the channel has been bound to it.
	this.onbind = function(){
		/*...*/
	};

	// Function called by the manager or application code if the channel must be closed.
	// All cleanup and related logic should be handled here so that open connections
	// are not left inaccessible by the program.
	this.close = function(){
		/* ... */
	};
}

If you are implementing your own channel, I strongly recommend referring to the specification document to be aware of expected return types, further conventions and so on.

Changelog

Note: Breaking changes will regularly occur before v1.0.0 due to instability of the library. Use at your own risk!

0.1.6

• Disconnection now removes nodes from internal store - they should no longer be found by .connectTo() calls on their ID.
• Changes to disconnect events so that they only fire ONCE per connection.
• Channels can now call conductor.rejct(id, reason) to reject a connection in progress.
• Removal of unnecessary debugger keyword when setting event handlers.
• connectTo() calls will now timeout - defaults to never, but can be user configured to reject after a given time.

0.1.5

• Added "onclose" event, which responds to EXPLICIT REQUESTS TO CLOSE THE CONNECTION. If you want a riskier metric (which will catch failures but may report false positives), then use "ondisconnect".
• Added "ondatachannel" event to tracked connection objects, this should fire when a data channel is added to a connection - in particular, when a received connection becomes ready for use.
• Added "ondisconnect" event to tracked connection objects, this should fire when a connection to another client terminates (either deliberately or on browser/node exit).
• Successive calls to .connectTo() will return the promise that was supplied on the first count.

0.1.4

• Fixes #4, where configs did not correctly merge. This allows serverside applications to work as intended now.
• Fixes #2, #6. These bugs both resulted from incorrect handling of resources and promises.

0.1.3

• Addition of simple .close() method on connections. This closes a connection for real, and is not intelligently managed.

0.1.2

• Change of dependencies to get webrtc-adapter-test from the official git now that API changes have been merged.

0.1.1

• Removal of wrtc as an optional dependency.

0.1.0

• Addition of .renameConnection() method for channels to use in cases where the destination is not yet known.
• Addition of .onconnection property, called when a channel is opened to the current user from another source.

0.0.1

• Initial Implementation