Imagine you’re using a banking app or trading platform to trade some assets. Suddenly, the charts freeze up, the price changes, and you’re at slightly lower profits. Frustrated, you have to refresh the web page, and the rates are all different again.
This scenario is both annoying and common in a web application that relies on traditional HTTP requests. HTTP requests cannot fulfill the modern-age requirement of real-time communication and near-instantaneous data transmission.
This is where WebSockets fit in, offering a better solution to the mandatory standards of today’s Internet.They provide a persistent, bi-directional communication channel, allowing for real-time data transfers. You can play games, fetch data, and chat without interruptions or delays.
In this article, we’ll dive into what a WebSocket application is and explore how they work, why they’re essential, and how you can implement them in your business. So buckle up and get ready to understand WebSockets!
Traditional Ways Of Building Near-Real-Time Experiences Before WebSocket Connections
Before WebSockets, building near-real-time experiences in a web application involved several traditional techniques. Here are some of the most common:
Polling — In HTTP polling, the client side repeatedly sends requests to the server at a set interval, asking for updates. This technique can work for simple applications that don’t require high-frequency updates. However, it can result in high latency and unnecessary network traffic, especially for applications that require frequent updates for incoming messages.
Long Polling — This polling variant involves keeping the request open until the server sends any new data. The long polling technique reduces network traffic compared to regular polling but can still result in high latency and overhead due to the repeated opening and closing of connections.
Comet Approach — This technique involves using a long-lived connection to simulate a bi-directional connection open between a client and a single server to send an HTTP response. It can be resource-intensive and result in high latency due to the need to continuously open and close connections.
Server-Sent Events (SSE) — SSE is a unidirectional communication WebSocket protocol that enables the server to push updates to the client as they occur. Unlike polling, SSE requires only a single, persistent connection. However, SSE only supports unidirectional communication, meaning the client side can’t send data back to the server.
While these traditional techniques can be effective in certain situations, they have significant limitations regarding near-real-time communication.
On the other hand, WebSockets provides a more efficient and reliable way to build web applications with real-time and near-real-time experiences.
