Is it possible to force Socket.io to use its Ajax fallback?

Question

I'm making an Ionic app that needs real time data (a few seconds delay is OK) and I want to use Ajax (with or without long polling) because I may not have the resources to use websockets. However, I want to make it easily upgradable to websockets. Since Socket.io uses Ajax as a fallback, is there a way to force it to use Ajax? This way, I can easily upgrade to websockets if I have the resources.

P.s. just confirming, a server can usually support more clients using Ajax than websockets right? (assume 5-10 seconds per Ajax request).

Answer 1

Assuming your backend is node.js, var socket = require('socket.io')(); and your socket.io version is 0.x:

socket.set('transports', [
  'xhr-polling'
]);

Otherwise the new syntax for socket.io 1.x is:

var socket = require('socket.io')({
  'transports': ['xhr-polling']
});