socket.emit() vs. socket.send()

Question

What\'s the difference between these two?

I noticed that if I changed from socket.emit to socket.send in a working program, the server fail

Answer 1

TL;DR:

socket.send(data, callback) is essentially equivalent to calling socket.emit('message', JSON.stringify(data), callback)

Without looking at the source code, I would assume that the send function is more efficient edit: for sending string messages, at least?

So yeah basically emit allows you to send objects, which is very handy.

Take this example with socket.emit:

sendMessage: function(type, message) {
    socket.emit('message', {
        type: type,
        message: message
    });
}

and for those keeping score at home, here is what it looks like using socket.send:

sendMessage: function(type, message) {
    socket.send(JSON.stringify({
        type: type,
        message: message
    }));
}