WebSocket support was introduced as a Labs feature last year, and we went through extensive testing and a number of technical iterations to improve performance and to provide a predictable compliance target. Thanks to great interaction with the community and early feature users, we now have a fast and robust solution available in production.
Why WebSockets
WebSockets provide bi-directional and full-duplex channels, allowing you to create applications with support for streaming, flexible protocols, and persistent connections.
Getting Started with New Apps
If you are creating a new application on Heroku, there is no need to enable WebSockets or to configure your application to use the new router — this is now the default configuration.
To further echo the sentiment from the Labs announcement of WebSockets, we’d like to show that it’s easy to get up and running experimenting with WebSockets on Heroku. We have easy to follow documentation on getting up and running with a variety of languages: Node.js, Ruby, Python, and Go.
Existing WebSockets Apps
If you already have an application on Heroku that has been using the WebSockets Labs feature, you have already been migrated to the new pathway, and you’re good to go! Thank you again for all your assistance through the beta period!
Looking Ahead
Over the coming weeks, all other applications will be migrated to the new routing pathway. While this migration process should not require any action on users’ part, we will work to provide transparency and guidance throughout the process. On Tuesday, July 22nd, all applications without ssl:endpoint addons will be migrated to the new router. Our teams will be reaching out to individual customers with ssl:endpoints with details of additional migration dates.
Please see Dev Center for more detailed information on the new router and WebSockets, or contact support or your technical account manager to let us know how we can help. We’re excited to see what you create with these new capabilities!