Connecting to a ratchet websocket server using PHP - php

Question

I am running a Ratchet WebSocketServer in my backend this is all working fine.
<?php
require '../vendor/autoload.php';
use Ratchet\WebSocket\WsServer;
use Ratchet\Http\HttpServer;
$wsServer = new WsServer(new Chat());
$wsServer->disableVersion(0);
$server = \Ratchet\Server\IoServer::factory(
new HttpServer(
$wsServer
),
8080
);
$server->run();
But I want to connect to the websocket using a plain php script to send a message to the server.
$host = 'ws://localhost'; //where is the websocket server
$port = 8080;
$local = "http://example.com"; //url where this script run
$data = "first message"; //data to be send
$head = "GET / HTTP/1.1"."\r\n".
"Upgrade: WebSocket"."\r\n".
"Connection: Upgrade"."\r\n".
"Origin: $local"."\r\n".
"Host: $host:$port"."\r\n".
"Sec-WebSocket-Key: asdasdaas76da7sd6asd6as7d"."\r\n".
"Content-Length: ".strlen($data)."\r\n"."\r\n";
//WebSocket handshake
$sock = fsockopen($host, $port);
fwrite($sock, $head ) or die('error:'.$errno.':'.$errstr);
$headers = fread($sock, 2000);
echo $headers;
fwrite($sock, $data) or die('error:'.$errno.':'.$errstr);
$wsdata = fread($sock, 2000);
fclose($sock);
But the error I receive is.
error:32744:Unable to find the socket transport "ws" - did you forget to enable it when you configured PHP?
Then when I change the host and don't use the ws:// and it says.
error:111:Connection refused
Does anyone have an idea how to send data to a running Ratchet WebSocket Server from a plain php file?

Answer 1

I have tried this project alongside Ratchet, and it works perfectly as a PHP client:
https://github.com/Textalk/websocket-php
Install with:
composer require textalk/websocket 1.0.*
And a usage example:
<?php
require('vendor/autoload.php');
use WebSocket\Client;
$client = new Client("ws://127.0.0.1:1234");
$client->send("Hello from PHP");
echo $client->receive() . "\n"; // Should output 'Hello from PHP'
I tested, and this also works with SSL if you're using wss:// (for remote websockets).