Receiving real-time incident updates

Retrieving incidents using the Websocket (real-time) API

To connect to the Incident WebSockets you need to connect to this url: wss://www.fireservicerota.co.uk/cable?access_token={access_token} and
connect to the channel called "IncidentNotificationsChannel" for the specific station you wish to receive updates for.

FireServiceRota uses Rails/ActionCable. These are plain websockets, but use a specific format to subscribe to a channel. See below for example code in Javascript. All major languages have production-ready websocket libraries.

The WebSockets returns the same exact format as the incident API.

// Opens a WebSocket connection to a specific stream.
function openWebsocketConnection() {
    // Creates the new WebSocket connection.
    socket = new WebSocket(urlWithAccessToken);
    socket.onopen = function(event) {
        console.log('WebSocket is connected.');
        const msg = {
            command: 'subscribe',
            identifier: JSON.stringify({
                 channel: 'IncidentNotificationsChannel',
                 // station ID for which you want updates for. Omit if any.
                 group_id: String(groupId) 
            }),
        };        socket.send(JSON.stringify(msg));
    };

    // When the connection is closed, this code will run.
    socket.onclose = function(event) {
         console.log('WebSocket is closed.');
    };
    // When a message is received through the websocket, this code will run.
    socket.onmessage = function(event) {            
        const response = event.data;
        const msg = JSON.parse(response);

        // Ignores pings.
        if (msg.type === "ping") {
          return;
        }        
        console.log("FROM RAILS: ", msg);

        // Do something with msg
    };

    // When an error occurs through the websocket connection, this code is run printing the error message.
    socket.onerror = function(error) {
        console.log('WebSocket Error: ' + error);
    };
}