L.TileLayer.Websockets plugin

[knutole]

Continuing discussion here, from Leaflet#4420.

We're planning to create a L.TileLayer.Websocket class, that requests tiles over websockets, instead of http requests. I realise this is a bit of an undertaking, so I'm just checking in to perhaps get some advice and heads-up on possible caveats. (Also, if anyone has done any work in this direction already, let me know, can't seem to find anything anywhere.)

Rationale for the plugin is that we need to request small tiles at a much higher rate than what browser http request limits permit (doing animation with tiles at >10fps). We run our own tileserver, which will accept websocket requests for tiles.

Outline

• use v1.0.0-beta.2
• extend L.TileLayer to L.TileLayer.Websockets
• fallback on L.TileLayer if websockets are unsupported (caniuse/websockets).
• replace tile.src (code) with websocket request

Any advice, input or encouragement is greatly appreciated.

[knutole]

@kaynz Currently, I'm upgrading our front-end with Leaflet 1.0.0-beta2. (No point building on 0.7!)

Did you think about this already? I'm curious to know what your usecase is, by the way? :)

[kaynz]

@knutole We're using latest leaflet master + GeoServer wms including GeoWebCache.

I'm fetching the Last Modified HTTP Header of the cached tiles on my client. Actually I'm not sure if there's a way to solve this with sockets.

[knutole]

@kaynz What are you trying to achieve, exactly? You want to cache tiles in browser-client? To use websocket tiles, you'll need a server that supports serving tiles over websocket. You can easily implement this yourself on Geoserver, I suppose - just create a wrapper for normal tile requests.