Processing Real-Time Updates

Real time refers to the capability of an application to handle and respond to data or events immediately as they happen, without any noticeable delay or latency. This is a very hot topic nowadays, with the demand for real-time features growing in web applications, particularly in areas such as live financial trading, live tracking systems, and live monitoring, analytics, and healthcare. Ultimately, the quicker you get the data, the sooner you can react and make decisions, increasing the chances of higher profits.

So, how can you process real-time messages in the frontend and update the displayed data automatically in the UI? This is what we will cover in this chapter. We will start by explaining the real-time requirement, and then we will walk you through the different steps to implement the reactive pattern for consuming real-time updates. Finally, we will learn the reactive pattern for handling reconnection.

In this chapter, we’re going to...