Consuming Coinbase Market and User WebSocket Feeds

A Coinbase market-data connection can keep delivering prices while the application's user-data connection is unavailable. Treating both as one connected flag conceals the loss of account events.

Advanced Trade has separate market and user endpoints. The coinbase-api stream client routes those connections through different keys. Track the scope actually required by each consumer.

The Coinbase tutorial explains supported credentials. The following module requires an appropriate Advanced Trade key and private signing material. It records message envelopes only; it does not construct an account cache:

import { WebsocketClient } from 'coinbase-api';

const apiKey = process.env.COINBASE_KEY_NAME;
const apiSecret = process.env.COINBASE_PRIVATE_KEY;
if (!apiKey || !apiSecret) throw new Error('Set the Coinbase signing credentials');

const client = new WebsocketClient({ apiKey, apiSecret });
client.on('update', (message) => {
  console.log({ channel: message.channel, type: message.type });
});
client.on('response', (response) => {
  console.log({ subscriptionResponse: response.type });
});
client.on('exception', () => {
  console.error('Coinbase stream exception');
});
client.on('reconnect', ({ wsKey }) => {
  console.error('Connection needs recovery:', wsKey);
});
const stop = () => client.closeAll();
process.once('SIGINT', stop);
setTimeout(stop, 20_000);
await client.subscribe(['user', 'heartbeats'], 'advTradeUserData');

The SDK supplies the supported authentication messages. Avoid logging complete private events while investigating a connection; they may contain account and order information.

A heartbeat helps establish that the connection is communicating. It does not prove that every required topic was accepted or that a quiet user channel has an initial complete state.

Inspect subscription responses and protocol errors. When a subscription is rejected, do not wait indefinitely for its first data message. Track the user connection separately from public market-data freshness.

A handler must interpret the documented snapshot and update semantics for the subscribed channel. The first message is not automatically a complete account. Balance, position, order, and execution requirements can also require different reads.

After a known interruption, repair the facts needed by the affected consumer. The account-state article explains why an arbitrary REST response cannot simply overwrite every newer private event.

An order can complete while the user stream is unavailable. Look up the recorded identifiers and relevant history when resolving an unknown submission. Public prices continuing to arrive do not establish that this private recovery is complete.