We are happy to share with you our WebSockets proof-of-concept, which demonstrates the potential of enabling WebSockets on the IC through a dedicated gateway.
To facilitate WebSocket connections between frontends and canisters on the IC, we use a gateway. This gateway provides a standard WebSocket endpoint for frontends and handles the communication with the canister. It establishes WebSocket connections with canisters through update calls and uses polling to obtain the latest messages and deliver them to the client.
We invite you to explore the code on GitHub, available at GitHub - dfinity/ic-websocket-poc. This repository can serve as a starting point for developers interested in leveraging WebSockets on the IC. However, please note that this proof-of-concept requires further improvements to enhance security and stability (e.g. using SSL and enhancing error handling) and is not usable in production.
We encourage you to give it a try and let us know what you think!
Messages from the canister (together with a timestamp and a sequence number) are certified. Likewise messages from the client are signed using the key the client registered in the first update call.