Integrate Real-Time Messaging with Azure Web PubSub

This skill equips Claude with the Azure Web PubSub Service SDKs for Python - both the server-side azure-messaging-webpubsubservice client and the azure-messaging-webpubsubclient WebSocket client - for real-time messaging at scale: generating client access tokens, broadcasting or targeting messages, managing groups and connections, and granting or checking fine-grained permissions.

Use it when building or reviewing Python code that pushes real-time updates over WebSockets - broadcasting to all connections, messaging a specific user or connection, managing group membership, or generating a short-lived connection token with scoped roles (e.g. webpubsub.sendToGroup, webpubsub.joinLeaveGroup). Its own best-practice guidance favors short-lived tokens, role-based permission limits, group-based targeted messaging, JSON content type for structured payloads, graceful connection closing with a reason, and handling reconnection in client applications. It is specific to Azure Web PubSub - it does not cover other real-time messaging services such as SignalR standalone, Pusher, or Ably.

Inputs: a connection string or an Entra ID credential (DefaultAzureCredential) plus a hub name (server-side), or a client access token URL (client-side); message payloads with a content_type (text/plain or application/json); and identifiers - user_id, group, connection_id - for targeted operations; a token request can also carry roles (e.g. webpubsub.sendToGroup, webpubsub.joinLeaveGroup) and groups to scope what the issued token can do. Outputs: a client access token dict with a url, boolean existence checks (connection_exists, user_exists, group_exists), and permission checks (check_permission). The client SDK exposes event handlers (connected, server-message, group-message) that fire with connection/message data as WebSocket events arrive.

Server-side operations include send_to_all, send_to_user, send_to_group, send_to_connection, group management (add_user_to_group, remove_user_from_group, add_connection_to_group, remove_connection_from_group), connection management (close_connection, close_all_connections), and permission control (grant_permission, revoke_permission, check_permission, each keyed by a permission name such as joinLeaveGroup, a connection_id, and a target_name). An async variant (azure.messaging.webpubsubservice.aio with azure.identity.aio) awaits each call and closes both the client and credential when done. The client SDK connects with client.open(), sends via client.send_to_group(...), and wires event handlers with the @client.on("connected") / @client.on("server-message") / @client.on("group-message") decorators. Configuration is read from AZURE_WEBPUBSUB_CONNECTION_STRING (an endpoint plus access key) and AZURE_WEBPUBSUB_HUB.

pip install azure-messaging-webpubsubservice
pip install azure-messaging-webpubsubclient

Python developers building real-time features - chat, live notifications, collaborative UIs - on Azure Web PubSub who need both the server-side broadcast/group-management API and a Python WebSocket client in the same codebase - and who want the client side to handle reconnection rather than assume the socket stays up - a team migrating off a self-hosted WebSocket server toward a managed Azure service without giving up group-based fan-out or per-connection permission checks.