How to enable compressed binary messaging in SignalR with Blazor WebAssembly...

[Jean-Pierre Poulin]

Hello, fabulous Syncfusion, Blazor & SignalR gurus!

I aim to add (hopefully compressed) binary messaging between my ASP.NET Core server with SignalR and my Blazor WebAssembly.

Messaging is fully operational in both directions but I notice in the browser's network monitor that the websocket used by SignalR still sends its messages via JSON and Base64.  Not only is my stream not compressed as configured server-side but Base64 throws away 2 bits out of 8 yielding a pipe efficiency decrease of around 28%.

It is my understanding that the 'MessagePack' protocol be used to enable full binary communication (removing the usage of JSON / Base64) and I have been following the relevant article at https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/aspnet/core/signalr/messagepackhubprotocol

As recommended in the above instructions, here is my current code in my server-side WebApplication builder:

builder.Services.AddSignalR()
  .AddMessagePackProtocol(options => {
    options.SerializerOptions = MessagePackSerializerOptions.Standard
      .WithResolver(MessagePack.Resolvers.StandardResolver.Instance)
      .WithSecurity(MessagePackSecurity.UntrustedData)
      WithCompression(MessagePackCompression.Lz4Block)
      WithCompressionMinLength(256);
});

However, the same instructions mention to add the following to my '.net client'...

    var hubConnection = new HubConnectionBuilder()
                        .WithUrl("/chathub")
                        .AddMessagePackProtocol()
                        .Build();

Unfortunately, the sample I've been basing my WebAssembly work on has no concept of a HubConnectionBuilder object and creates its builder as follows:

    var builder = WebAssemblyHostBuilder.CreateDefault(args);

Trying everything I could think of, I cannot find a way to find a sub-object of 'WebAssemblyHostBuilder' where I could call the 'AddMessagePackProtocol()' so that MessagePack also works client-side

My hunch is that the server side is properly configured for (compressed) MessagePack but the web-assembly client is not, so I still get JSON + Base64 messaging.  (I can live without compression support within MessagePack but would like to lose the 28% pipe efficiency drop caused by JSON + Base64)

Key questions:

Q1: Is MessagePack supported in Blazor WebAssemblies?

Q2: What is the proper procedure to configure the SignalR pipe within Blazor WASM to use MessagePack?

Q3: Is MessagePack the highest-performance pipe for my client/server architecture?

Thank you very much for any hint you can offer!

   Jean-Pierre

[Jean-Pierre Poulin]

In case anyone runs into this issue it has been solved here at https://stackoverflow.com/questions/77669089/how-to-enable-compressed-binary-messaging-in-signalr-with-blazor-webassembly-wit/77669498#77669498

[Muthukrishnan Kandasamy]

Hi Jean,

It's great to hear that you've resolved the issue you encountered, as indicated by your post on Stack Overflow.

For reference, here's the link to the solution you found:

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/77669089/how-to-enable-compressed-binary-messaging-in-signalr-with-blazor-webassembly-wit/77669498#77669498

Should you have any further questions regarding Syncfusion Blazor components, please feel free to reach out.

Best regards,

Muthukrishnan K