I couldn't find a clear answer on Google or SO.

I know a net.Server instance has a close method that doesn't allow any more clients in. But it doesn't disconnect clients already connected. How can I achieve that?

I know how this can be done with Http, I guess I'm asking if it's the same with Tcp or if it's different.

With Http, I'd do something like this:

var http = require("http");

var clients = [];

var server = http.createServer(function(request, response) {
    response.writeHead(200, {"Content-Type": "text/plain"});
    response.end("You sent a request.");
});

server.on("connection", function(socket) {
    socket.write("You connected.");
    clients.push(socket);
});

// .. later when I want to close
server.close();
clients.forEach(function(client) {
    client.destroy();
});

Is it the same for Tcp? Or should I do anything differently?

I couldn't find a clear answer on Google or SO.

I know a net.Server instance has a close method that doesn't allow any more clients in. But it doesn't disconnect clients already connected. How can I achieve that?

I know how this can be done with Http, I guess I'm asking if it's the same with Tcp or if it's different.

With Http, I'd do something like this:

var http = require("http");

var clients = [];

var server = http.createServer(function(request, response) {
    response.writeHead(200, {"Content-Type": "text/plain"});
    response.end("You sent a request.");
});

server.on("connection", function(socket) {
    socket.write("You connected.");
    clients.push(socket);
});

// .. later when I want to close
server.close();
clients.forEach(function(client) {
    client.destroy();
});

Is it the same for Tcp? Or should I do anything differently?

• javascript
• node.js
• http
• tcp
• server

• yes, the same. Keep list of connected clients and close all active before doing server.close() if you need hard shutdown ( but if it's really "hard" just doing process.exit() might be better) – Andrey Sidorov Commented Jan 17, 2015 at 23:36
• 2 Don't forget to remove sockets when they disconnect too (e.g. the socket's close event), otherwise you will end up with an ever-increasing socket array containing potentially dead sockets. – mscdex Commented Jan 18, 2015 at 0:03

3 Answers 3

Since no answer was provided, here is an example of how to open and (hard) close a server in node.js:

Create the server:

var net = require('net');

var clients = [];
var server = net.createServer();

server.on('connection', function (socket) {
    clients.push(socket);
    console.log('client connect, count: ', clients.length);

    socket.on('close', function () {
        clients.splice(clients.indexOf(socket), 1);
    });
});

server.listen(8194);

Close the server:

// destroy all clients (this will emit the 'close' event above)
for (var i in clients) {
    clients[i].destroy();
}
server.close(function () {
    console.log('server closed.');
    server.unref();
});

Update: Since using the above code, I've ran into an issue that close will leave the port open (TIME_WAIT in Windows). Since I'm intentionally closing the connection, I'm using unref as it appears to fully close the tcp server, though I'm not 100% if this is the correct way of closing the connection.

I am using NodeJS v16.13.2 ... When the process containing the server code exits, all clients connection are closed/destroyed by default.

I came here to find out how I could listen for a server.("exit", myTaskCallback), since I wanted to delete some files while exiting the server. But the answer I have found is that such event does not exists. I had to listen to process.on('exit', myTaskCallback) to do the job.

1. sock.end(); //to correctly send the end of the connection in both sides
2. sock.on("close", fn) //add event listeners to destory all related sockets and clients
3. sock.on("close", () => { sock.destroy() }) //to destroy your side socket wrapper

Example:

  const closeConn = async (sock, cb) => {
    sock.ev.on("close", async ()=>{
      await sock?.destroy();
      if (typeof cb === "function") cb();
    });
    await sock?.end();
  }

  closeConn(sock, openSock);

You can check more here