Unlocking Real-Time Communication with Laravel WebSockets

The Relationship Between Laravel WebSockets and Pusher

Before we dive into the nitty-gritty of Laravel WebSockets, it’s essential to understand its connection with Pusher. While Laravel WebSockets doesn’t require Pusher credentials, it does utilize the Pusher protocol and message structure. This allows existing packages and applications that support Pusher to work seamlessly with Laravel WebSockets.

Handling CORS in Multi-Subdomain Environments

When working with multiple subdomains, Cross-Origin Resource Sharing (CORS) becomes a critical consideration. By default, web browsers restrict cross-domain requests, including AJAX requests. To overcome this limitation, you’ll need to enable CORS in your Laravel application.

Enabling CORS in Laravel

To configure CORS for your Laravel WebSocket server, open the cors.php configuration file and add the broadcasting/auth route to the paths array. Set the supports_credentials option to true, which sets the Access-Control-Allow-Credentials header to true.

<?php

return [
    'paths' => ['api/*', 'broadcasting/auth'],
    'supports_credentials' => true,
];

Setting Up Laravel WebSockets

Now that we’ve covered the basics, let’s move on to setting up Laravel WebSockets. First, install the package using Composer:

composer require laravel/websockets

Then, publish the migration file and run the migrations:

php artisan vendor:publish --provider="Laravel\Webpackages\WebSocketsServiceProvider"
php artisan migrate

Next, publish the Laravel WebSocket configuration file and update the broadcasting driver to use Pusher:

php artisan vendor:publish --provider="Laravel\Webpackages\WebSocketsServiceProvider"

In the broadcasting.php file, update the Pusher configuration to point to your own server. Set the host and port configuration keys to match your Laravel WebSocket server.

<?php

return [
    'connections' => [
        'pusher' => [
            'driver' => 'pusher',
            'key' => env('PUSHER_APP_KEY'),
            'secret' => env('PUSHER_APP_SECRET'),
            'app_id' => env('PUSHER_APP_ID'),
            'options' => [
                'cluster' => env('PUSHER_APP_CLUSTER'),
                'useTLS' => true,
            ],
            'host' => '127.0.0.1',
            'port' => 6001,
        ],
    ],
];

Setting Up Laravel Echo

Laravel Echo is a JavaScript library that simplifies subscribing to channels and listening for events broadcasted by your Laravel server-side broadcasting driver. Install Echo via npm:

npm install laravel-echo pusher-js

Configure Echo to work with Laravel WebSockets:

import Echo from 'laravel-echo';

window.Pusher = require('pusher-js');

window.Echo = new Echo({
    broadcaster: 'pusher',
    key: 'YOUR_PUSHER_APP_KEY',
    cluster: 'YOUR_PUSHER_APP_CLUSTER',
    encrypted: true,
});

Note: Replace `YOUR_PUSHER_APP_KEY` and `YOUR_PUSHER_APP_CLUSTER` with your actual Pusher app key and cluster.