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Is it possible to terminate a websocket connection from server without closing the entire server? If it is then, how can I achieve it?

Note: I'm using NodeJS as back-end and 'ws' websocket module.

So because of some sort of omission in the documentation regarding ws.close() and ws.terminate() I think the solutions in provided answers won't close the sockets gracefully in some cases, thus keeping them hanging in the Event Loop.

Compare the next two methods of ws package:

Initializes close handshake, sending close frame to the peer and awaiting to receive close frame from the peer, after that sending FIN packet in attempt to perform a clean socket close. When answer received, the socket is destroyed. However, there is a closeTimeout that will destroy socket only as a worst case scenario, and it potentially could keep socket for additional 30 seconds, preventing the graceful exit with your custom timeout:

// ws/lib/WebSocket.js:21
const closeTimeout = 30 * 1000; // Allow 30 seconds to terminate the connection cleanly.
ws.terminate():
Forcibly destroys the socket without closing frames or fin packets exchange, and does it instantly, without any timeout.
Hard shutdown
Considering all of the above, the "hard landing" scenario would be as follows:
wss.clients.forEach((socket) => {
  // Soft close
  socket.close();
  process.nextTick(() => {
    if ([socket.OPEN, socket.CLOSING].includes(socket.readyState)) {
      // Socket still hangs, hard close
      socket.terminate();
Soft shutdown
You can give your clients some time to respond, if you could allow yourself to wait for a while (but not 30 seconds):
// First sweep, soft close
wss.clients.forEach((socket) => {
  socket.close();
setTimeout(() => {
  // Second sweep, hard close
  // for everyone who's left
  wss.clients.forEach((socket) => {
    if ([socket.OPEN, socket.CLOSING].includes(socket.readyState)) {
      socket.terminate();
}, 10000);
                This answer is incredibly useful and insightful. Solved a major Websocket connection issue for me.
– Mustafa Alammar
                Jun 28, 2021 at 19:31
                When you say "...keeping them hanging in the Event Loop" do you mean the client event loop or the server's event loop?
– sam
                Jan 24 at 20:22
If you want to kick ALL clients without closing the server you can do this:
for(const client of wss.clients)
  client.close();
you can also filter wss.clients too if you want to look for one in particular. If you want to kick a client as part of the connection logic (i.e. it sends bad data etc), you can do this: 
let WebSocketServer = require("ws").Server;
let wss = new WebSocketServer ({ port: 8080 });
wss.on('connection', function connection(ws) {
    ws.send('something');
    ws.close(); // <- this closes the connection from the server
and with a basic client 
"use strict";
const WebSocket = require("ws");
let ws = new WebSocket("ws://localhost:8080");
ws.onopen = () => {
    console.log("opened");
ws.onmessage = (m) => {
    console.log(m.data);
ws.onclose = () => {
    console.log("closed");
you'll get: 
d:/example/node client
opened
something
closed
According to the ws documentation, you need to call websocket.close() to terminate a connection.
let server = new WebSocketServer(options);
server.on('connection', ws => {
  ws.close(); //terminate this connection
Just use ws.close() in this way.
var socketServer = new WebSocketServer();
socketServer.on('connection', function (ws) {
  ws.close(); //Close connecton for connected client ws
If you use var client = net.createConnection() to create the socket you can use client.destroy() to destroy it.
With ws it should be:
var server = new WebSocketServer();
server.on('connection', function (socket) {
  // Do something and then
  socket.close(); //quit this connection
        
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