Use LiveTry to explore Azure Web PubSub capabilities

LiveTry is a browser-based tool that helps you use Azure Web PubSub’s real-time messaging features—no code or local setup required. With just a few clicks, you can create clients, join groups, and send messages using both client-side and server-side APIs.

This guide walks you through two common messaging scenarios in LiveTry, while helping you understand important concepts like connections, groups, and messages.

What you learn

You explore two messaging patterns often used in real-time applications:

• Server-to-group messaging: Using the sendToGroup API to broadcast messages to all clients in a group.
• Client-to-group messaging: Azure Web PubSub supports a capability that allows a client in a group to send messages directly to other clients in the same group—without routing through your app server—reducing latency.

Key concepts

Before we get started, here’s a quick refresher on core Azure Web PubSub concepts that you interact with in LiveTry:

• Hub: A logical unit used to isolate and organize messaging logic. Clients always connect to a hub. With LiveTry, real traffic goes through the resource. For this tutorial, we recommend specifying a test hub name that doesn’t overlap with your production traffic.
• Connection: A persistent WebSocket connection between a client and the Azure Web PubSub service.
• Group: A server-managed subset of connections. Messages sent to a group are delivered only to the connections within that group.
• Messages: The payloads exchanged between clients and the service. Messages can be broadcast to all, targeted to groups, or directed to individual connections.

Scenario 1: Send a message to a group from the server

In this scenario, you simulate server-side broadcasting using the sendToGroup REST API. This scenario demonstrates how the service routes a message from your backend to all clients in a specified group.

Steps

1. In the Azure portal, navigate to your Azure Web PubSub resource.
2. Open the LiveTry blade.
3. Click + Add Client to create multiple connections.
4. Assign each client to a group (for example, group1).
5. Under the Server tab in the "Publish messages" section, select Send to group.
6. Enter the group name (group1), a sample message, and invoke the sendToGroup API.
7. Switch to the Client tab and observe the message appear in each client's message log.

What you’re learning

You send messages to a group of clients using RESTful APIs. LiveTry demonstrates how server-to-group communication works without needing to deploy a backend. Azure Web PubSub also provides server SDKs for C#, JavaScript, Java, and Python.

To visualize message broadcasting in action, try repeating the steps with multiple clients. LiveTry supports up to five concurrent simulated clients.

Scenario 2: Send a message to a group from a client

In this scenario, you create a client sending a message to other clients in the same group—similar to a user posting a message in a chat room.

Steps

1. In LiveTry, add two or more clients and specify the same value for the Initial Groups field.
2. For the client that sends the message, select Allow client to send to all groups.
3. Switch to that client’s panel, specify the group name, enter a message, and click Invoke.
4. The other clients in the group receive the message in real time.

What you’re learning

This scenario showcases client-to-group messaging, which is ideal in applications where server round-trips introduce unnecessary latency. It's a core part of Web PubSub’s client publish/subscribe model.

Next steps

• Learn more about key concepts in Azure Web PubSub
• To build a local sample, follow the Quickstart guide
• Explore guides under "How-to guides" for common tasks when developing with Azure Web PubSub