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SharpMUSH

WebSockets

WebSockets

Section titled “WebSockets”

WebSockets are a network protocol used by JavaScript-enabled web browsers to make persistent network connections, similar to the telnet connection you use to connect to SharpMUSH. WebSockets are always on (at /ws on the connection server), so it is possible to connect from MUSH clients embedded in HTML pages using JavaScript. A WebSocket client can natively render HTML, but can also parse Pueblo links into HTML links that send a command to the MUSH when clicked. For safety, we separate plain text from the other kinds of HTML/Pueblo code that we want rendered. In order to render HTML/Pueblo, a player uses special functions to embed HTML/Pueblo markup. Without the Send_OOB power (or wizard), these functions allow only a safe list of tags (see TAGWRAP()). Any HTML code strings that are not properly marked up will simply show up as unrendered plain text.

See https://github.com/grapenut/websockclient for an example client.

Kinds of markup

Section titled “Kinds of markup”

The different kinds of markup that can be sent to clients are:

  • Plain text
  • HTML tags
  • Pueblo links
  • JSON objects
  • Prompts

Without using any HTML markup functions, output is rendered as normal plain text (including ANSI and xterm256 color).

See HTML FUNCTIONS for functions used to embed HTML markup tags one at a time.
See WSHTML() for help embedding large segments of raw HTML markup to be sent to WebSocket clients.

For clickable command links, use CMDLINK(), e.g. cmdlink(Who is online?,+who). The web portal and the example client above both follow it, and so do Pueblo and MXP clients, each in its own dialect.

JSON and prompts

Section titled “JSON and prompts”

You can also send data encapsulated in a JSON object.

See json() for information about formatting data into JSON object strings.
See OOB() for sending a JSON object to a WebSocket client as a JavaScript object, or to a telnet client over GMCP.

See @prompt for information about sending telnet GOAHEAD prompts. Support for prompts depends on the WebSocket client. The example client above shows prompts on their own line, separating the input and output windows, but requires PROMPT_NEWLINES to be turned off.

::: seealso