SocketRocket is a conforming Objective-C WebSocket client library for iOS, macOS, tvOS, and visionOS.
The tool solves the problem of establishing reliable WebSocket connections in Apple platforms by implementing RFC 6455 compliance. It handles the complexity of WebSocket protocol negotiation and communication through an asynchronous, non-blocking architecture where most work occurs on a background thread.
Developers building native Apple applications that require WebSocket connectivity should consider SocketRocket if they need a mature, standards-compliant implementation. The tool suits projects ranging from real-time chat applications to live data streaming. It can be integrated via CocoaPods, Carthage, or as a subproject within an Xcode workspace. The library performs well according to its own benchmarks and passes the vast majority of Autobahn's fuzzing test suite, with only minor non-strict UTF-8 validation differences from the reference implementation.
The project maintains active test coverage through an included test suite that can run from the command line or within Xcode, supported by Python-based testing infrastructure. A demo application called TestChat is provided to illustrate real-world usage patterns with both Python and Go server implementations available for testing purposes. The codebase includes comprehensive documentation of its core API through the SRWebSocket class and SRWebSocketDelegate protocol, with clear guidance on memory management behavior during connection lifecycle.
