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Web Development Intermediate

What is Server-Sent Events (SSE)?

A web technology enabling servers to push real-time updates to browsers over a single HTTP connection, simpler than WebSockets.

Server-Sent Events provide a standard way for servers to push data to clients over HTTP. Unlike WebSockets (bidirectional), SSE is unidirectional (server to client) but simpler to implement, works over standard HTTP, and automatically reconnects on disconnection. The server sends text/event-stream responses with data, event type, retry interval, and optional IDs for resumption. Use cases include live notifications, stock tickers, social media feeds, and progress updates. SSE works through proxies and load balancers without special configuration. The EventSource JavaScript API provides a clean interface. For bidirectional communication, WebSockets remain the better choice.

Related Terms

OAuth Scope
A mechanism in OAuth that limits an application's access to a user's account to specific resources or actions.
Lazy Loading
A technique that delays loading non-critical resources until they are needed, improving initial page load performance.
gRPC
A high-performance RPC framework using Protocol Buffers and HTTP/2 for efficient service-to-service communication.
HATEOAS
Hypermedia As The Engine Of Application State — a REST constraint where API responses include links to related actions and resources.
Idempotency
A property where performing an operation multiple times produces the same result as performing it once.
CORS Headers
HTTP headers that control cross-origin resource sharing between different domains, specifying allowed origins, methods, and headers.
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