[VB6] Visual Basic 6 Client Websocket Control 1.11 BETA

[xxdoc123]

Greetings Friends,

I present to you the first free client Websocket control made in Visual Basic 6 (with source code) that can handle both secure (ssl/ssh) and normal websocket server connections!

Attachment 182328

I have personally had to abandon 3 large personal projects of my own because i needed websocket functionality with SSL and couldn't find anything on the internet to fulfill that need (free or open source). I started a couple times to try to code one of my own but the extreme complexity of implementing SSL and lack of time always hindered my progress and I usually gave up an moved on to something else. (if you check the SSL code you will know what i mean by complex).

But then alas, one day I stumbled upon wqweto's VBAsyncSocket project and hope once again glimmered in my eyes. Here was a project with full SSL/TLS implementation that worked seamlessly under the hood and supported IPV6 to boot. I then came across joshyfrancis's post regarding a websocket server, which led me to Youran's online example code. All of which helped me in achieving my goal of creating a client websocket control in VB6. This project wouldn't have been possible without those people's contributions. Hopefully, you will find this useful and beneficial to your websocket related projects.

Note, this websocket doesnt support application layer protocols, and full HTTP header handling, mainly because it doesn't have the full power of a web browser behind it like most websockets. As such it handles only the most simplest of http redirects where location: in the header defines the new URL. Amazon Cloudfront redirects for example are not handled. You are also responsible for any data formatting such as JSON, XML etc.. This control only deals with the actual websocket protocol layer.

Some Uses for a Websocket control are:

1) Connect to and control OBS Studio with the OBS-WebSocket plugin.
2) Connect to cryptocurrency websites and retrieve pricing and/or actually make trades
3) Connect to sports sites and get sports ticker information
4) Easily implement multimedia chat, text chat, and shared drawing
5) Similar to crypto, connect to Stock sites and get financial information and tickers
6) Connect to Social Media Sites and get real-time timeline updates
7) Connect to Twitch IRC chat and implement a chat bot


Please post any bugs or questions related to the websocket control below and I will try to fix them as much as possible. If you make any useful additions, please share them so they can be added into the main source code.

Please direct any questions regarding the SSL code to wqweto as I don't know crap about SSL.

best regards,
vbLewis

UPDATE Version 1.7 BETA - 3/23/2022
1) Fixed a major bug in send function having to do with fragmented frames


UPDATE Version 1.6 BETA - 3/19/2022
1) Fixed a major bug in sending code where data was larger than 4kb
2) fix an error in the reconnect function related to a copy paste bug
3) fixed a bug in the raisedata function related to decompression
4) renamed some variables for better clarity


UPDATE Version 1.5 BETA - 10/23/2021

Notes: This is a huge update to the internal buffer handling. The previous buffer handling strategy became so complex it was getting hard to follow (and i coded it!).
So after much thought i came up with a new much simpler and actually better strategy.
Ive actually been able to put this iteration through the paces and testing and after many days of running and handling Gigs of data without a single error, I have very high confidence in this new buffer handling scheme.

Also fixed the bug with only using TLS 1.3.

This will probably be (fore-going any major unforeseen bugs) the last update for a while as Im very busy with other things.
As usual I frequently check this forum so if you have any problems, issues, bugs, with this update let me know below.


Known Issues:
1) Proxies are not supported, will probably add support in a future update.
2) There are several features (such as compression) that have not been tested because I cant find a server to test them with, but in theory they should work so long as the code is correct.


See CHANGELOG.txt for older updates.

How to concatenate a service address in this format

ws://localhost:9010/ajaxchattest

TEST ws://82.157.123.54:9010/ajaxchattest disconnect