Socket IO get data from URL

Question

Greetings,

I'm trying to broadcast messages to users based on the data I get from a URL. The data returned from the URL will be json. I'm very new to node.js and socket.io and I have node.js and socket.io installed. I'm just not 100% sure on how to get the data I need to broadcast to the clients via URL. What other requires do I need?

My server file server.js

var http = require('http'),  
io = require('socket.io'), 
// Do I need another require here?    

server = http.createServer(function(req, res){ 
 // your normal server code 
 res.writeHead(200, {'Content-Type': 'text/html'}); 
 //res.end('<h1>Hello world</h1>'); 
});
server.listen(8080);

// socket.io 
var socket = io.listen(server); 
socket.on('connection', function(client){ 

  //I'm not sure where/how to get data from a URL
  function getMessages() {

    var request = messageClient.request("GET", "json.php", {"host": "myurl.com"});

    // Is this how I send the data to the client?
    socket.broadcast(request);

    //request.end();
  }

  setInterval(getMessages, 1000);

  client.on('message', function(){ … }) 
  client.on('disconnect', function(){ … }) 

});

My client

// Load jQuery too
<script src="http://pathtojquery.js"></script> 
<script src="http://{node_server_url}/socket.io/socket.io.js"></script> 
<script> 
 var socket = new io.Socket({node_server_url}); 
 socket.connect();
 socket.on('connect', function(){ … }) 
 socket.on('message', function(data){
   // Use jquery to handle the json data here and display message to the clients
   // I can handle this part as long as 'data' is json

 }) 
 socket.on('disconnect', function(){ … }) 
</script> 

Answer 1

function getMessages() {
    http.get({ host: 'myurl.com', port: 80, path: 'json.php' }, function(response) {
        var data = "";
        response.on('data', function(chunk) {
            data += chunk;
        });
        response.on('end', function() {
            socket.broadcast(JSON.parse(data));
        });
    });
}

HTTP module documentation