APapitman·Aug 23, 2024Submission
WebSocat – Like Netcat for WebSockets
5 points · Open discussionvi
websocat
Rust2018–2024
vi / websocat
websocat
Command-line client for WebSockets, like netcat (or curl) for ws:// with advanced socat-like functions
9Distinct people
9Mentions
0Explicit recommenders
8.8KGitHub stars
What to know before exploring
What it is
Command-line client for WebSockets, like netcat (or curl) for ws:// with advanced socat-like functions
GitHub
Where it is used
No documented product use has been verified yet.
What people are saying
No recommendation phrase was found in the indexed comments.
No classified warning is attached to this page. Read the discussions before treating silence as approval.
Also in these discussions
No other repository is repeatedly linked in the same discussions.
This week on Hacker News
Nov 7–Nov 14 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/14/2026, 3:56:07 PM UTC.
No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.
Mentions over time
HN mentions by year9 dated mentions
Observed mentions: 2018-07-04 18:33:58 UTC to 2024-08-23 20:26:56 UTC.
Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.
View mention counts and date ranges
| Period | Start (UTC) | End (exclusive, UTC) | Mentions | Submissions | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2018 | 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 1 | 0 |
| 2019 | 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2 | 1 | 1 |
| 2020 | 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2021 | 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| 2022 | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 3 | 1 | 2 |
| 2023 | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| 2024 | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 1 | 0 |
What Hacker News says
9 sourcesIt's similar to running netcat in server mode, wrapping a script. It's even closer to doing that using websocat [1], whereby one does not have to do the websocket header juggling.
The main difference is that while netcat or websocat will spawn a new process for each connecting client, ScaleSocket has a concept of rooms (channels). For a room, a process is spawned once only. All clients connecting to the same room are routed to the same process. This is not straight forward to do using the forementioned tools.
There's a small comparison page [2] where I have mentioned some alternative tools.
[1] https://github.com/vi/websocat
[2] https://www.scalesocket.org/man/comparison
In Show HN: ScaleSocket – Turn any script into a multiplayer WebSocket serverone combination I came to really love this year is babashka (https://github.com/babashka/babashka) + websocat (https://github.com/vi/websocat). I wrote about a method of live web programming with this pair at https://github.com/whacked/cow/blob/main/a%20technique%20for...
babashka isn't strictly necessary; you can also pipe plain text, but pushing hiccup expressions to the browser DOM from the REPL with instant feedback has opened a new world of interactive programming for me.
In Ask HN: What was the best software that you used during 2022?I've used https://github.com/vi/websocat in the past and had very good luck with it.
In WebSockets in curlwebsocat: Command-line client for WebSocket like netcat or curl
35 points · Open discussionDon't forget the venerable websocat for testing and scripting websockets!
https://github.com/vi/websocat
Such a useful tool when the need arises, lifesaver.
In Netcat – All you need to knowWebsocat: a command-line client for WebSockets
1 points · Open discussionGood time to plug this utility, swiss army knife for websockets: https://github.com/vi/websocat
Author is extremely nice as well.
In WebsocketdWebsocat – CLI client for WebSockets, like netcat with socat-like functions
1 points · Open discussion