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how-to-server-sent-events.md

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title description author ms.service ms.topic ms.author ms.date
Configure API for server-sent events in Azure API Management
How to configure an API for server-sent events (SSE) in Azure API Management
dlepow
api-management
how-to
danlep
02/24/2022

Configure API for server-sent events

This article provides guidelines for configuring an API in API Management that implements server-sent events (SSE). SSE is based on the HTML5 EventSource standard for streaming (pushing) data automatically to a client over HTTP after a client has established a connection.

Tip

API Management also provides native support for WebSocket APIs, which keep a single, persistent, bidrectional connection open between a client and server.

Prerequisites

[!INCLUDE premium-dev-standard-basic.md]

Guidelines for SSE

Follow these guidelines when using API Management to reach a backend API that implements SSE.

  • Choose service tier for long-running HTTP connections - SSE relies on a long-running HTTP connection. Long-running connections are supported in the dedicated API Management tiers, but not in the Consumption tier.

  • Keep idle connections alive - If a connection between client and backend could be idle for 4 minutes or longer, implement a mechanism to keep the connection alive. For example, enable a TCP keepalive signal at the backend of the connection, or send traffic from the client side at least once per 4 minutes.

    This configuration is needed to override the idle session timeout of 4 minutes that is enforced by the Azure Load Balancer, which is used in the API Management infrastructure.

  • Relay events immediately to clients - Turn off response buffering on the forward-request policy so that events are immediately relayed to the clients. For example:

    <forward-request timeout="120" fail-on-error-status-code="true" buffer-response="false"/>

  • Avoid other policies that buffer responses - Certain policies such as validate-content can also buffer response content and shouldn't be used with APIs that implement SSE.

  • Disable response caching - To ensure that notifications to the client are timely, verify that response caching isn't enabled. For more information, see API Management caching policies.

  • Test API under load - Follow general practices to test your API under load to detect performance or configuration issues before going into production.

Next steps