I would like to start a project that uses websockets for a custom chat. Of course I already have a simple PHP + MySQL Server and I would like to start on top on this. So I found this: https://github.com/Flynsarmy/PHPWebSocket-Chat
To run a websocket server on top of PHP. On my local (Mac) machine, it's running already. But I don't know how to start this script on the server. Because I don't have any Shell access?
This is the server I am using:
You're going to need shell access. Get in touch with your hosting service and ask if they provide shell access (although it doesn't look like they allow it, or they'd probably say upfront). If not you'll have to find a new service.
WebSocket is a protocol that transforms an initial HTTP-compliant connection into a full-duplex socket using a custom protocol.
There are two ways to do this. Option 1 is to use a standard HTTP-server like Apache to accept the initial HTTP connection. You can then use the Websocket support in this HTTP-server to upgrade to Websocket from the business code. This is what is done in servers like Tomcat or JBoss.
Option 2 is to open your own server socket, essentially creating your own HTTP server from within PHP. You implement a very restricted subset of HTTP yourself, and try to upgrade every connection to WebSocket. This is what the PHPWebsocket library does.
Option 1 is incompatible with PHP. Every webserver uses PHP to generate HTML content. No webserver currently supports upgrading the current HTTP connection to Websocket.
Option 2 is incompatible with hosting providers like GoDaddy or 1Blu. It does not make any sense: you are trying to implement your own webserver, but there is already a webserver running on those machines!
Long story short: as long as no native WebSocket support exists in Apache where control can be forwarded to PHP, you are stuck. See websockets apache server compatibility for different methods of attacking the problem.
