WebSocket Client Utility

A simple Go utility to connect to WebSocket endpoints and automatically detect and display plain JSON or brotli-compressed JSON messages.

Features

• Connect to any WebSocket endpoint
• Automatic format detection:
  • First tries to parse as plain JSON
  • If that fails, attempts brotli decompression then JSON parsing
  • Falls back to raw output if all parsing fails
• Pretty-printed JSON output
• Graceful shutdown with Ctrl+C

Installation

Install from GitHub

go install github.com/danyalprout/flashblocks-websocket-client@latest

Build from source

git clone https://github.com/danyalprout/flashblocks-websocket-client.git
cd flashblocks-websocket-client
go build -o wsclient

Usage

# Connect to websocket (auto-detects format)
flashblocks-websocket-client ws://example.com/websocket

If you built from source:

# Connect to websocket (auto-detects format)
./wsclient ws://example.com/websocket

Arguments

• First argument (required): WebSocket URL to connect to

Examples

# Basic usage with auto-detection
flashblocks-websocket-client ws://localhost:8080/ws

# Secure websocket
flashblocks-websocket-client wss://api.example.com/stream

# Using local build
./wsclient ws://localhost:8080/ws
./wsclient wss://api.example.com/stream

How It Works

The utility automatically detects the data format for each message:

1. Plain JSON: If the raw message can be parsed as JSON, it's pretty-printed directly
2. Brotli-compressed JSON: If JSON parsing fails, the message is decompressed with brotli and then parsed as JSON
3. Raw output: If both JSON parsing and brotli decompression fail, the raw message is displayed

This means you don't need to specify the format - the tool handles both plain and compressed data automatically.

Dependencies

• github.com/gorilla/websocket - WebSocket client library
• github.com/andybalholm/brotli - Brotli compression library