How to use ActionCable as API

Question

I built a very simple app using Rails 5 beta 1 and ActionCable to show when users come online and let them send messages to each other.

Now, I would basically like

Answer 1

While mwalsher's solution was extremely helpful to me, I recently found a pull request on the Rails repository with an official solution to my question.

https://github.com/rails/rails/pull/24991

I assume, in the near future this will be added to the main documentation. Here is the link to the official actioncable npm package: https://www.npmjs.com/package/actioncable

You can use it similar to mwalsher's solution with any JS app. Just install the npm package:

npm install actioncable --save

Here the JS example from the documentation:

ActionCable = require('actioncable')

var cable = ActionCable.createConsumer('wss://RAILS-API-PATH.com/cable')

cable.subscriptions.create('AppearanceChannel', {
  // normal channel code goes here...
});

Edit: The pull request has been merged for a while, now and the description is part of the official Readme - just not yet in the Rails Guides.