iOS 15 WKWebView websocket behaviour

Question

j4nnis OP

Created Jul ’21

Replies 32

Boosts 3

Views 29k

Participants 28

Hello,

in our app we are reliant on a web socket inside a WKWebview. In previous releases this web socket worked well. In the iOS 15 betas though this web socket behaves differently: it connects to our server successfully but once the client tries to send any data through it the web socket throws an error and closes with a non descriptive error:

The operation couldn’t be completed. (kNWErrorDomainPOSIX error 54 - Connection reset by peer)

Looking into the system log the deepest error I can make out is:

nw_protocol_boringssl_error(1772) [C12.1.1:2][0x102e0d540] Lower protocol stack error post TLS handshake. [54: <private>]

A test web socket to another server seems to be working.

I also notices that a MitM proxy like Charles no longer shows web socket connections in the iOS 15 beta. This just indicates that something might have changed.

Because the communication via this socket is very important for the functionality of our app I must know what the issue is. I tried adding ATS exceptions for the URL of the socket to no avail.

Maybe this is a temporary bug in iOS 15 that will be fixed until its released? Or maybe anyone has experienced this kind of error in the past?

Boost

Answer 1

DTS Engineer OP

Apple

Jul ’21

Problems like this, where code worked on a previous OS release but fails on a beta seed of a new OS, are always bugworthy. So, I recommend that you file a bug about this. Make sure to include a sysdiagnose log taken shortly after reproducing the problem.

Also, is the WebSocket server in question available on the public Internet? If so, include its URL in your bug report. If not, it would also help if you could attach an RVI packet trace for the time where you reproduced the problem.

Please post your bug number, just for the record.

Share and Enjoy
—
Quinn “The Eskimo!” @ Developer Technical Support @ Apple
let myEmail = "eskimo" + "1" + "@" + "apple.com"

1

Answer 2

j4nnis OP

Jul ’21

Thank you for your response. I did file a bug report: https://feedbackassistant.apple.com/feedback/9374056

I will try to add the additional info you mentioned.

0

Answer 3

sandorfromterre haute OP

Sep ’21

I also filed a bug before finding this post. FB9631338. We have been able to work around this by using cordova-plugin-advanced-websocket which uses socketrocket.

0

Answer 4

mhub OP

Sep ’21

Was somebody able to work around this without socketrocket?

is there still any way this will be fixed for the ios release?

0

Answer 5

DTS Engineer OP

Apple

Sep ’21

We suspect that this is fallout from a change in WKWebView where it switched from a custom WebSocket implementation to the one in NSURLSession. However, we’re not 100% sure. If you can reproduce this with a server that’s available on the public Internet, please file a bug about this and attach a tiny test project that demonstrates the issue. Or, if you’ve already filed a bug (thanks!) attach it to that bug.

Was somebody able to work around this without socketrocket?

If you use the WebSocket support in NSURLSession, does it suffer from the same problem?

Likewise, when happens if you use the WebSocket support in NWConnection?

These points are relevant because a) the lower down the stack you go the more we can focus your bug report, and b) they might lead to a workaround.

Share and Enjoy
—
Quinn “The Eskimo!” @ Developer Technical Support @ Apple
let myEmail = "eskimo" + "1" + "@" + "apple.com"

0

Answer 6

mhub OP

Sep ’21

Got it, thank you for your response.

It will take a few days for us to produce a minimal test project. That said, I did find out today that while the connection consistently doesn't work initially, it does consistently succeed after 90 seconds of the app being in the foreground. Maybe that helps investigating the issue?

1

Answer 7

DTS Engineer OP

Apple

Sep ’21

It will take a few days for us to produce a minimal test project.

Thanks for taking the time to do that.

I did find out today that while the connection consistently doesn't work initially, it does consistently succeed after 90 seconds of the app being in the foreground.

Weird.

Maybe that helps investigating the issue?

Perhaps. When you discover potentially useful info like this, please add it to your bug report so that the folks investigating this see it.

Share and Enjoy
—
Quinn “The Eskimo!” @ Developer Technical Support @ Apple
let myEmail = "eskimo" + "1" + "@" + "apple.com"

0

Answer 8

j4nnis OP

Sep ’21

Just one more observation: I found that the issue seems to be depending on the size of the message. In my example project a 125 byte message can be sent but a 126 byte message cannot....

1

Answer 9

Nikolai22 OP

Sep ’21

We faced error WebSocket connection to 'wss:****' failed: The operation couldn’t be completed. (kNWErrorDomainPOSIX error 100 - Protocol error) with big websocket messages on iOS15 (production, not beta) if server responds with "Sec-WebSocket-Extensions: permessage-deflate; server_no_context_takeover; client_no_context_takeover", if there are no such headers or if message very small then all works fine. Maybe there is a bug with websockets compression in WKWebView

2

Answer 10

nansen_su OP

Sep ’21

This error is caused by NSURLSession’s inability to process split messages normally. As long as the received WebSocket Message Frame is Fin=0, an error will occur. Our team adjusted the WebSocket Server configuration in the production environment to solve this problem.

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Answer 11

JayHsu OP

Sep ’21

Hi nansen_su ~ I have same problem aboult NSURLSession and WebSocket Message Frame Fin=0 error ,have any web page reference let me to know how to adjusted the WebSocket Server configuration,thx

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Answer 12

DirtyHerri OP

Sep ’21

Hi, i am facing a similar Problem since iOS 15. In my case, it is a JavaScript client trying to communicate with Wowza Streaming Engine. The connection fails as soon the client tries to send some data.

Disabling "NSURLSession WebSocket" resolves the issue.

While my project is not available to the public, I found a page (which I am not related to), where the issue can be reproduced

https://libwebsockets.org/testserver/ (click on the "send junk" button)

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Answer 13

DTS Engineer OP

Apple

Sep ’21

Is apple planning to disable it in the next release?

Apple generally doesn’t discuss its future plans.

For all those reading along at home…

If this problem is causing you grief I encourage you to file a bug about it. If you can attach a tiny test project that reproduces the issue with a site that’s available on the public Internet, that’d be fab. If not, see my post above for the next best thing.

Please post your bug number, just for the record.

Share and Enjoy
—
Quinn “The Eskimo!” @ Developer Technical Support @ Apple
let myEmail = "eskimo" + "1" + "@" + "apple.com"

0

Answer 14

renars OP

Sep ’21

Faced the same issues with iOS15 and private Wowza based project. According Wowza docs their WebSocket lib doesn't support packet fragmentation feature at all: https://www.wowza.com/resources/serverapi/com/wowza/wms/websocket/model/IWebSocketSession.html#getPacketFragmentationSize--

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Answer 15

ArjenH OP

Sep ’21

Same issue here with Safari on iOS 15 and also MacOS Monterey beta7. On MacOS Chrome works fine.

It is a websocket server based on Espressif ESP32 hardware with a simple webserver built on the lib: https://github.com/me-no-dev/ESPAsyncWebServer

Setting safari =>Advanced=>Experimental Features=>NSURLSession WebSocket to off solves the issue. I can connect one of the devices for testing to the public internet if that helps.

2