AI solution for Interview Question on BFE.dev
80. Long Polling vs Sever-Sent Event vs WebSocket

Sure! Here are some pros and cons for each approach:

• Long Polling:

Pros:

• Compatible with most web servers
• Low overhead compared to WebSockets, since it's based on HTTP requests
• Can handle multiple requests/responses at once

Cons:

• Not suitable for low-latency real-time applications, due to long response times

• Can overload servers if there are many clients polling at once

• Requires server-side code to handle connection management

• Server-Sent Events:

Pros:

• Simple to implement for real-time, one-way data flow
• More lightweight than WebSockets, since it's based on HTTP
• Automatically handles reconnection and session management

Cons:

• Limited to one-way communication from server to client

• Requires EventSource API support on the client side

• Not supported on older browsers

• WebSockets:

Pros:

• Bidirectional communication between server and client
• Low latency and high throughput for real-time applications
• Handles reconnection and session management

Cons:

• Requires WebSocket support on both client and server side
• Higher overhead compared to HTTP-based approaches
• Can consume more server resources if not managed properly

Each approach has its own strengths and weaknesses, so the choice depends on the specific needs of the application being developed.