What is a Socket?
A socket is an endpoint which enables communication between two different processes that are taking place on single or different machines. A Web Socket Integration is generally used in a client-server application framework. The server is used to perform some tasks based on the request of the client. There are different sockets like
- Datagram Sockets
- Sequenced Packet Sockets
- Raw Sockets
- Stream Sockets
Difference between API and Socket
The API, client, and the server can be implemented independently, without the acknowledgment of each other. There are some advantages of this such as the client-side code can be changed any time without affecting the server. Also, another feature is that the server need not know in what state the client is and some times vice versa.
Coming to Websocket the communication is done two way. This is dependent on both the client and the server. It is stateful, the acknowledgment regarding the client side state is sent to the server and also the server side state is known to the client into taking the next action.
Here are some key differences
- Rest APIs are uni-directional whereas web sockets are bi-directional.
- Rest APIs are HTTP which are horizontally scaled whereas websockets connections are scaled vertically.
- A new TCP connection is initiated for every HTTP request whereas websockets works more effectively when the client-server communications are done over the same TCP connection.
- The API communication cost is higher when compared to the websockets communication cost
- The API is best suited for the situation where there are a lot of requests whereas WebSocket is suited for the real-time applications.
Example of real-time usage of live web sockets
Here is a real-time example of the working of the web socket in emergency situations like fire accidents.
The user contacts the fire station for help and clearly, the user won’t be in a state to explain the whole issue in the call, it might be difficult to share the details such as location. In such cases, it would be better to have an interface where the user’s location is tracked during the call itself so that they can reach the place and help them as quick as possible. Live web socket integration will allow you to have such interface where you can gather the live data.
Advantages of Websockets
Here are some benefits of using websockets
- Backward compatibility is possible by switching to websockets from HTTP connection.
- Websockets support data streaming.
- By using the full-duplex through a single connection websockets reduce the unnecessary traffic.
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