What's the difference between io.sockets.emit and broadcast?

What's the difference between io.sockets.emit and socket.broadcast.emit? Is it only that broadcast emits to everyone BUT the socket that sends it?

It seems like they can be used interchangeably:

io.sockets.on('connection', function (socket) {
  //these should do the same thing  
  io.sockets.emit('this', { receivers: 'everyone'});

  socket.broadcast.emit('this', { receivers: 'everyone but socket'}); //emits to everyone but socket
  socket.emit('this', { receivers: 'socket'}); //emits to socket
});

io.sockets.emit will send to all the clients

socket.broadcast.emit will send the message to all the other clients except the newly created connection

This Socket.IO Wiki post will help everyone reading this question:

The recent cheatsheet can also be viewed here:

https://socket.io/docs/v4/emit-cheatsheet

socket.broadcast.emit() behaves similar to io.sockets.emit, but instead of emitting to all connected sockets it will emit to all connected socket except the one it is being called on. So in this case the socket referenced by socket will not receive the event.

Scenario:1:- By the use of io.sockets.emit [Detailed Diagram:-io.sockets.emit][1]

> Here Every Socket gets the Message including Initiator.

  // BY IO>SOCKETS>EMIT
   io.sockets.emit('MyChannelBroadcast',
               {
                 owner:"Anshu Ashish",
                 clientCount:clients,
                 message:"Welcome All"
               }
    );

Scenario:2:- By the use of socket.broadcast.emit [Detailed Diagram:-socket.broadcast.emit][2]

> Here Every Sockets are getting Message Except One i.e Initiator.

    // BY SOCKET>BROADCAST>EMIT
   socket.broadcast.emit('BroadCastExceptMe',{data:"HAVE A NICE DAY"});

Conclusion:- Now it will totally depends our business requirement that which one will be preferable. [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/f52nC.jpg [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/b2ioe.jpg

To make it quite simple, consider the following example: there are 2 clients client A, client B and a server we are using in response to certain event emitted by the client.

socket.brodcast.emit()

client A sends the event In this case, the server will not send the event back to client A but it will send the events to all others connected sockets. So in this case only the client B will get the event response

io.emit()

client A sends the event, the server will send the reply event to all the connected sockets both client A and client B