# Long Polling

* Request is taking long, I’ll check with you later But talk to me only when it's ready
* moving short polling from the client to the server

## Use case

* Short polling and req/resp not ideal
* Same usecase as short polling But too chatty
  * A request takes long time to process
  * The backend want to sends notification
* Kafka uses it

## How

* Client sends a request
* Server responds immediately with a handle
* Server continues to process the request
* Client uses that handle to check for status
* Server DOES not reply until it has the response
  * The connection is still there but server only responds when ready to
* So we got a handle, we can disconnect and we are less chatty
* Some variation has timeouts too

## Pros

* less chatty
* Backend friendly - dont overwhlem it
* client can disconnect

## Cons

* not real time

## Links

* <https://www.baeldung.com/spring-mvc-long-polling>