Short Polling

• Request is taking a while, I’ll check with you later

• checking if this thing is done

• Letting the backend handle it (aysnc), and it receives a response with some id, which it can use to send more requests to check if the job has been completed (and/or get some data)

Uses

• A request takes a long time

  • uploading a large file

• Backend wants to send a notificaiton

How

• Client sends a request

• Server responds immediately with a handle( id/callback)

• but server can process it whenever

• Server continues to process the request

• Client uses that handle to check for status

• Multiple “short” request response as polls

PRos

• simple

• Good for long runnign requests

• client disconnects

  • can save request id from long running request, and can start up again (on app start up, or cron job)

Cons

• Too chatty -> Increased network bandwidth

  • Especially with scaling, with one client is fine, but as the number of clients increase can overwhelm the server and bandwidth

• Wasted backend resources

  • Instead of checking, it could have done other things