What's new with Azure Web PubSub

On this page, you can read about recent updates about Azure Web PubSub. As we make continuous improvements to the capabilities and developer experience of the service, we welcome any feedback and suggestions. Reach out to the service team at [email protected]

Q3 2024

Serverless mode for Socket.IO in public preview

This new serverless mode eliminates the need for developers to maintain persistent connections on their application servers, offering a more streamlined and scalable approach. In addition to the existing default mode, developers can now deploy Socket.IO applications in a serverless environment using Azure Functions. This provides a stateless, highly scalable infrastructure, simplifying the development of real-time features while reducing both operational costs and maintenance overhead.

This capability is not natively supported by Socket.IO library and is made possible by Azure Web PubSub for Socket.IO. It is part of our ongoing commitment to enhancing Socket.IO developers' experience and simplifying developing real-time applications.

Q2 2024

MQTT support in public preview

Web applications that communicate using MQTT over WebSocket can seamlessly connect to Azure Web PubSub to publish and receive messages. The service recognizes and translates MQTT messages into its native protocol, enabling cross-communication between MQTT web clients and other Web PubSub clients.

This new capability addresses two key use cases:

• Real-time Applications With Mixed Protocols: You can allow clients using different real-time protocols to exchange data through the Azure Web PubSub service.
• Support For Additional Programming Languages: You can use any MQTT library to connect with the service, making it possible to integrate with applications written in languages like C++, beyond the existing SDKs in C#, JavaScript, Python, and Java.

Q1 2024

Service VS Code extension is in public preview

Developers can manage Azure Web PubSub resources on Azure portal or using Azure CLI. Now with the release of Web PubSub service’s VS Code extension, developers who use VS Code enjoy the benefit of managing their Web PubSub resources right from within their code editor. This extension minimizes context switching and improves developers’ productivity.

Features included:

• View, create, delete, and restart Azure Web PubSub resources
• View, create, delete hub settings
• View, create, delete, and update event handlers
• View resource metrics
• Scale up and scale out
• Check resource health
• Regenerate access key
• Copy connection string or endpoint of the service to clipboard
• Switch the anonymous connect policy of hub setting
• Attach Azure Web PubSub local tunnel tool
• View real-time resource logging during development through LiveTrace tool

Q4 2023

Web PubSub for Socket.IO is now generally available

Read more about the journey of bringing the support for Socket.IO on Azure.

Since we public previewed the support for Socket.IO a few months back, we have received positive feedback from Socket.IO community. One user who migrated a Socket.IO app over the weekend even shared with us that it's "shockingly good."

Users enjoy the fact that they can offload scaling a Socket.IO app without changing anything to the core app logic. We're happy to share that the support for Socket.IO is now generally available and suitable for use in production.

Q3 2023

Geo-replica is now in public preview

The 99.9% and 99.95% uptime guarantees for the standard tier and premium tier are enough for most applications. Mission critical applications, however, demand even more stringent uptime. Developers had to set up two resources in different Azure regions and manage them with much complexity. With the geo-replication feature, it's now as simple as a few button clicks on Azure portal.