How to Create Websockets Server in PHP

How to create websockets server in PHP

I was in the same boat as you recently, and here is what I did:

I used the phpwebsockets code as a reference for how to structure the server-side code. (You seem to already be doing this, and as you noted, the code doesn't actually work for a variety of reasons.)
I used PHP.net to read the details about every socket function used in the phpwebsockets code. By doing this, I was finally able to understand how the whole system works conceptually. This was a pretty big hurdle.
I read the actual WebSocket draft. I had to read this thing a bunch of times before it finally started to sink in. You will likely have to go back to this document again and again throughout the process, as it is the one definitive resource with correct, up-to-date information about the WebSocket API.
I coded the proper handshake procedure based on the instructions in the draft in #3. This wasn't too bad.
I kept getting a bunch of garbled text sent from the clients to the server after the handshake and I couldn't figure out why until I realized that the data is encoded and must be unmasked. The following link helped me a lot here: (~~original link broken~~) Archived copy.
Please note that the code available at this link has a number of problems and won't work properly without further modification.
I then came across the following SO thread, which clearly explains how to properly encode and decode messages being sent back and forth: How can I send and receive WebSocket messages on the server side?
This link was really helpful. I recommend consulting it while looking at the WebSocket draft. It'll help make more sense out of what the draft is saying.
I was almost done at this point, but had some issues with a WebRTC app I was making using WebSocket, so I ended up asking my own question on SO, which I eventually solved: What is this data at the end of WebRTC candidate info?
At this point, I pretty much had it all working. I just had to add some additional logic for handling the closing of connections, and I was done.

That process took me about two weeks total. The good news is that I understand WebSocket really well now and I was able to make my own client and server scripts from scratch that work great.
Hopefully the culmination of all that information will give you enough guidance and information to code your own WebSocket PHP script.

Good luck!

Edit: This edit is a couple of years after my original answer, and while I do still have a working solution, it's not really ready for sharing. Luckily, someone else on GitHub has almost identical code to mine (but much cleaner), so I recommend using the following code for a working PHP WebSocket solution:

https://github.com/ghedipunk/PHP-Websockets/blob/master/websockets.php

Edit #2: While I still enjoy using PHP for a lot of server-side related things, I have to admit that I've really warmed up to Node.js a lot recently, and the main reason is because it's better designed from the ground up to handle WebSocket than PHP (or any other server-side language). As such, I've found recently that it's a lot easier to set up both Apache/PHP and Node.js on your server and use Node.js for running the WebSocket server and Apache/PHP for everything else. And in the case where you're on a shared hosting environment in which you can't install/use Node.js for WebSocket, you can use a free service like Heroku to set up a Node.js WebSocket server and make cross-domain requests to it from your server. Just make sure if you do that to set your WebSocket server up to be able to handle cross-origin requests.

Creating a PHP websockets server

I had the same problem bro but no need of using Ratchet or other libraries you can write your own simple code . The handshake process,and the masking-unmasking of messages is rather difficult so i copied the code for those

function perform_handshaking($receved_header,$client_conn, $host, $port)
{
    $headers = array();
    $lines = preg_split("/\r\n/", $receved_header);
    foreach($lines as $line)
    {
        $line = chop($line);
        if(preg_match('/\A(\S+): (.*)\z/', $line, $matches))
        {
            $headers[$matches[1]] = $matches[2];
        }
    }

    $secKey = $headers['Sec-WebSocket-Key'];
    $secAccept = base64_encode(pack('H*', sha1($secKey . '258EAFA5-E914-47DA-95CA-C5AB0DC85B11')));
    //hand shaking header
    $upgrade  = "HTTP/1.1 101 Web Socket Protocol Handshake\r\n" .
    "Upgrade: websocket\r\n" .
    "Connection: Upgrade\r\n" .
    "WebSocket-Origin: $host\r\n" .
    "WebSocket-Location: ws://$host:$port/\r\n".
    "Sec-WebSocket-Accept:$secAccept\r\n\r\n";
    socket_write($client_conn,$upgrade,strlen($upgrade));
    return $upgrade;
}

function unmask($text) {
    $length = ord($text[1]) & 127;
    if($length == 126) {
        $masks = substr($text, 4, 4);
        $data = substr($text, 8);
    }
    elseif($length == 127) {
        $masks = substr($text, 10, 4);
        $data = substr($text, 14);
    }
    else {
        $masks = substr($text, 2, 4);
        $data = substr($text, 6);
    }
    $text = "";
    for ($i = 0; $i < strlen($data); ++$i) {
        $text .= $data[$i] ^ $masks[$i%4];
    }
    return $text;
}

//Encode message for transfer to client.
function mask($text)
{
    $b1 = 0x80 | (0x1 & 0x0f);
    $length = strlen($text);

    if($length <= 125)
        $header = pack('CC', $b1, $length);
    elseif($length > 125 && $length < 65536)
        $header = pack('CCn', $b1, 126, $length);
    elseif($length >= 65536)
        $header = pack('CCNN', $b1, 127, $length);
    return $header.$text;
}

Instead of socket_accept user socket_read to get the http header containing request from webpage that it wants to upgrade its http conn to websocket then use the handshake function above to write an accept header message .then your connection will be established .but still on the client side you have to add events like these

if("WebSocket" in window){
    var a = "ws://"+serverip+":9000";
    var ws = new WebSocket(a);
    var error = null;

    ws.onopen = function(){
        open();
    }

    ws.onerror = function(err){
        errorhandler(err);

    }
    ws.onmessage = function(e){
        messagehandler(e);

    }
    ws.onclose = function(){
        close();
    }

}

function  open(){
               document.getElementById('logs').innerHTML+='<p>WebSocket Connection OPened</p>';

}

function errorhandler(err){
               document.getElementById('logs').innerHTML+='<p>WebSocket Connection Error occured  '+err.data+'</p>';

}

function messagehandler(a){
               document.getElementById('logs').innerHTML+="<p>"+a.data+"</p>";

}

function close(){
                document.getElementById('logs').innerHTML+='<p>WebSocket Connection Closed</p>';
                ws = null;

}

How do I create a websockets server in PHP?

Sockets in general are just TCP streams that you can send data over. HTTP is built on top of them. WebSockets are build on/in parallel with HTTP, and allow for sending data back and forth to a browser in real-time. Standard sockets can do some of this, but browsers have tight security which makes it tough to use standard sockets to communicate with them.

WebSockets are useful when you need a persistent connection to the server from the browser, for real-time applications, or things like push notifications.

I don't know much about PHP implementations unfortunately, but it looks like there is a library here: http://code.google.com/p/phpwebsocket/

Personally, I'd shy away from doing things like this in PHP because PHP/Apache can be pretty heavy, and since the socket is always open while someone is viewing the page, server resources can be used up pretty quickly.

A lot of people like to use NodeJS with socket.io because then you can use JavaScript on the server and the browser, but really it is up to preference. I would look at Socket.IO and find a language that has a good client for it.

It looks like this question might be useful too. Using PHP with Socket.io

How to Create Websockets Server in PHP