Second socket.io emit on server side not being received by angular - angularjs

Question

I'm building an application using socket.io to 'match' users in realtime. The idea is that user a presses a button to be matched and then when user b makes a match request the two are matched by sending io messages to both clients. I'm using AngularJS and ui-router and bt-fords socket.io.
The client makes a request when a controller is entered as shown below:
lunchrControllers.controller('UserMatchingController', ['$state', 'socket', 'authService',
function ($state, socket, authService) {
socket.emit('match', {userEmail: authService.currentUser()});
var currEmail = authService.currentUser();
// only want to catch emits suffixed with the users email
socket.on('matched' + currEmail, function (data) {
$state.go('users.matched', {name: data.name})
});
}]);
where authService is used to persist the email of the currently logged in user. On the server side I have code that does a bunch of db work with mongoose (it can definitely be cleaned up) as such:
var mongoose = require('mongoose');
var User = mongoose.model('User');
module.exports = function(socket) {
socket.on('match', function(data){
User.findOne({email: data.userEmail}, function(error, user) {
if(error){
return
}
user.wantsToBeMatched = true;
user.save(function(err){
// bleh
});
});
User.find({email: {'$ne': data.userEmail }, wantsToBeMatched: true}, function(error, users){
if(error || users.length == 0){
//bleh
return
}
console.log(users);
User.findOne({email: data.userEmail}, function(error, currentUser) {
if(error) {
return;
}
// there is another user who wants to be matched
users[0].wantsToBeMatched = false;
users[0].matchedWith = currentUser.firstname;
currentUser.wantsToBeMatched = false;
currentUser.matchedWith = users[0].firstname;
users[0].save(function() {});
currentUser.save(function() {});
console.log("I'm gonna emit " + ('matched' + currentUser.email) + " with name = " + currentUser.matchedWith);
console.log("I'm gonna emit " + ('matched' + users[0].email) + ' with name = ' + users[0].matchedWith);
socket.emit('matched' + users[0].email, {name: users[0].matchedWith});
socket.emit('matched' + currentUser.email, {name: currentUser.matchedWith});
});
});
})
};
The problem is that only the second user (in this example user b) to request a match receives the socket.emit from the server. I've tried changing the order of emit messages in the server which didn't help. The console logging logs exactly what I'd expect:
I'm gonna emit matcheda#a.com with name = b
I'm gonna emit matchedb#b.com with name = a
I've tried using different browsers, using incognito, putting the code on an EC2 instance and having a friend try it out on a different IP and get the same result everytime.
Basically, the problem boils down to the following code not being executed in the browser of user a:
socket.on('matched' + currEmail, function (data) {
$state.go('users.matched', {name: data.name})
});

Answer 1

Figured it out. Here's the change that I needed to make:
socket.broadcast.emit('matched' + users[0].email, {name: users[0].matchedWith});
I was missing the word broadcast. The reason my previous code wasn't working is because (according to my new understanding of socket.io) socket.emit only sends messages to the client which triggered the socket.on. To send to other clients the message needs to be broadcasted.