Half the purpose of a distributed event bus (i.e. Hook.io) is to distribute over multiple computers, and not just multiple processes. hook.io-mdns wraps .listen(), .connect() and .start() of the standard hook.io Hook object so that they "browse" and "advertise" hooks automatically.

In real life, this means you can use hook.io just as usual, but it will now discover hooks on nearby machines. Sweet isn't it?

Because of a problem with the mdns npm package, it must be installed manually through my own fork.

 git clone [email protected]:emilisto/node_mdns.git
 cd node_mdns && npm install -g

And then

 git clone [email protected]:emilisto/hook.io-mdns.git
 cd hook.io-mdns && npm install -g

( The -g flags can prolly be dropped if your NODE_PATH is setup properly, haven't gotten my head around this infinitely complicated npm thing just yet, skills are to come. )

Now the magic part!

 node bin/start

Run this on machine #1, and then on another machine #2. Notice how #2 discovers and connects to #1. To see the magic, close both and run node bin/start in opposite order and see how #2 now takes the role as listener and #1 connects to #2.

This is just how one's used to hook.io working locally, but now it works across machines. Imagine the awesomeness possible.

• Support finding multiple hooks through some choosing/prioritization mechanism
• Make it possible for one hook to take over the role as listener if the listener host goes down. Look into how hook.io handles this with locally discovered hooks.
• A cool example app