Node.js, part 23: Node 22 — WebSocket client, glob, and magic bytes

Part 23from the Node.js series · 24 parts in all

Node 22 reads like a release that went through the dependency list of an ordinary service and moved half of it into core. A WebSocket client, a glob implementation, a file watcher, and the node --run script runner all shipped — each one retiring a very popular package. Part 23 is what they replace and how to use them.

A WebSocket client, no ws dependency

const ws = new WebSocket('wss://example.com/feed');

ws.onopen = () => ws.send(JSON.stringify({ subscribe: 'prices' }));
ws.onmessage = (event) => console.log(JSON.parse(event.data));
ws.onerror = (err) => console.error('socket error', err.message);

// Closing cleanly, which is the part hand-rolled clients get wrong.
ws.close(1000, 'done');

The API is the browser's, which is the same argument as fetch in part 16: one piece of knowledge, two runtimes. Reconnection, backoff, and heartbeats are still yours — a socket library is not a resilience library.

glob and watch, in core

const { glob } = require('node:fs/promises');
const { watch } = require('node:fs');

const tests = await glob('src/**/*.{test,spec}.{js,ts}');

// Cross-platform recursive watch: no chokidar, no fsevents build step.
for await (const event of watch('src', { recursive: true })) {
  console.log(event.eventType, event.filename);
}

That second block is the one that removes a native dependency from a lot of toolchains — chokidar existed largely because recursive watching was unreliable, and the platform support is now good enough for core to expose it.

Smaller things worth knowing

• node --run <script> runs a package.json script directly, without npm's startup cost or its argument handling quirks — noticeably faster for repeated runs.
• import.meta.dirname finally gives an ES module its own directory, retiring the fileURLToPath incantation from part 5.
• V8 12.4 brings the standard library closer to the browser's, which mostly means fewer surprises when code moves between them.

Across parts 16, 22 and 23 the pattern is the same: the platform absorbed the packages everyone was installing, and the reasonable dependency list for a Node service became visibly shorter than it was in 2018. Next: the last dependency worth removing — the one that runs your logging and shutdown.