socket.io: Getting all connected sockets in Node/Express

Sometimes you need a list of all connected sockets in your server side API. This could be, for example, if you want to loop through all the sockets and emit something when a certain event happens, such as some a data model updating or something else.

As of socket.io version 1.3, you have access to all sockets using “socketio.sockets.sockets” programatically.

So for example if you needed all sockets in an Express controller running on node.js, you could access it this way.

In your server side app.js, socket.io is usually configured in express this way:

var app = express();
//...
var socketio = require('socket.io')(server, {
  //...
});

And then, you can save the reference for socketio for later using Express’s app.set() and app.get(). In app.js you would do:

app.set('socketio', socketio);

Then in an express controller, you can access socketio like so:

exports.whateverController = function(req, res, next) {
  var socketio = req.app.get('socketio');
  //...
}

And then you can loop through the sockets:

var sockets = socketio.sockets.sockets;
for(var socketId in sockets)
{
  var socket = sockets[socketId]; //loop through and do whatever with each connected socket
  //...
}

Simple, right?!