As developers, we often face the challenge of building real-time features. Imagine you are tasked with creating a live dashboard that displays system metrics, a breaking news feed, or real-time notifications. The initial, almost instinctual, thought for many of us is, “I need WebSockets.” This often leads us down a path of managing complex bidirectional connections, handling protocol upgrades, and writing custom reconnection logic. But what if you only need to push data from the server to the client? Is there a simpler, more elegant way?
The answer is yes. Meet Server-Sent Events (SSE), a mature, browser-native HTML5 standard that leverages the simplicity and ubiquity of HTTP for powerful, unidirectional server-to-client streaming. SSE isn’t a new, flashy technology. It’s a reliable workhorse that has been part of the web platform for years, yet it remains one of its most underrated features.
In this post, we will embark on a journey to master Server-Sent Events in ASP.NET Core. We will start by deconstructing the protocol, then build a production-ready, scalable SSE solution. Finally, I will equip you with the architectural knowledge to make the right choice between SSE, WebSockets, and SignalR. By the end, you will not only know how to implement SSE but, more importantly, when and why to choose it
Read more on: A Pragmatic Guide to Server-Sent Events (SSE) in ASP.NET Core.
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