Heroku Node.js WebSocket server error: 'Connection' header value is not 'Upgrade': Upgrade

Question

I'm testing my Node.js app that uses WebSockets on Heroku and I keep running into this error:

Client: WebSocket connection to 'ws://myapp.herokuapp.com/' failed: Error during WebSocket handshake: Unexpected response code: 503

Server: 2014-05-11T23:57:15.710087+00:00 heroku[router]: at=error code=H23 desc="Endpoint misconfigured" method=GET path=/ host=myapp.herokuapp.com request_id=a874df22-4a1a-44fb-bcc5-2473bf1e6370 fwd="151.35.127.210" dyno= connect= service= status=503 bytes=

I have Heroku labs websockets enabled and the program uses process.env.PORT.

EDIT: I tried deleting the app and recreating it using a different name, and now I'm getting this error:

Client: WebSocket connection to 'ws://myapp2.herokuapp.com/' failed: Error during WebSocket handshake: 'Connection' header value is not 'Upgrade': Upgrade

Server: 2014-05-13T23:27:52.443504+00:00 heroku[router]: at=info method=GET path=/ host=myapp2.herokuapp.com request_id=c83b94a6-04ef-42cf-9837-c4bda8a85c14 fwd="151.35.127.210" dyno=web.1 connect=26 service=1029 status=101 bytes=681

Does anyone know what could be causing this?

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

After 5 days of chatting with Heroku support, I've solved the problem. Kind of. Heroku websockets just weren't working. I tried everything. So I finally decided to try OpenShift. I had my app (the same code that wasn't working on Heroku) working perfectly on OpenShift, with websockets and everything, in only 2 hours.

I highly recommend OpenShift to anyone who is looking for free and stable Node.js hosting with WebSockets. Their CLI is just as easy to use as Heroku's, and they give you 3 gears (512MB each) for free!

Here's a couple tips for using Node.js WebSockets on OpenShift:

Use these variables for the server ip and port: var ip = process.env.OPENSHIFT_NODEJS_IP || "127.0.0.1"; var port = process.env.OPENSHIFT_NODEJS_PORT || 8080;

But your websocket client should connect to: ws://app-domain.rhcloud.com:8000 or wss://app-domain.rhcloud.com:8443 (for secure https connections)

Source: https://www.openshift.com/blogs/paas-websockets

Answer 2

In my case it was caused by MongoLab being updated and getting out of sync with my version of moongoose. Updating moongoose solved it for me.