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Polling

Also called: short polling, periodic refresh, checking for updates.

The page asks the server "anything new?" again and again on a timer, for example every 5 seconds. It is simple, but news arrives up to one interval late, and most requests come back empty.

The page asks the server “anything new?” every 2 s. A message waits on the server until the next check, and most checks find nothing.

Stopped

Say it in a prompt

While the order page is open and the tab is visible, poll GET /api/orders/:id/status every 5 seconds. Send the last ETag in If-None-Match so an unchanged status returns 304, and stop polling once the status is "delivered" or after 10 minutes.

Seen on

  • GitHub REST API: The events API is built for polling: it sends an X-Poll-Interval header with how many seconds to wait, and 304 Not Modified when nothing changed.

You might describe it as

  • page that checks for new messages every few seconds
  • keep asking the server if something changed
  • auto refresh the data on a timer

Not to be confused with

  • Server-sent events (SSE)

    With polling the page keeps asking; with server-sent events the server tells the page the moment something happens.

  • Webhook

    Polling is your code asking again and again; a webhook is the other service calling your server once when something happens.