DZone
Thanks for visiting DZone today,
Edit Profile
  • Manage Email Subscriptions
  • How to Post to DZone
  • Article Submission Guidelines
Sign Out View Profile
  • Post an Article
  • Manage My Drafts
Over 2 million developers have joined DZone.
Log In / Join
Please enter at least three characters to search
Refcards Trend Reports
Events Video Library
Refcards
Trend Reports

Events

View Events Video Library

Zones

Culture and Methodologies Agile Career Development Methodologies Team Management
Data Engineering AI/ML Big Data Data Databases IoT
Software Design and Architecture Cloud Architecture Containers Integration Microservices Performance Security
Coding Frameworks Java JavaScript Languages Tools
Testing, Deployment, and Maintenance Deployment DevOps and CI/CD Maintenance Monitoring and Observability Testing, Tools, and Frameworks
Culture and Methodologies
Agile Career Development Methodologies Team Management
Data Engineering
AI/ML Big Data Data Databases IoT
Software Design and Architecture
Cloud Architecture Containers Integration Microservices Performance Security
Coding
Frameworks Java JavaScript Languages Tools
Testing, Deployment, and Maintenance
Deployment DevOps and CI/CD Maintenance Monitoring and Observability Testing, Tools, and Frameworks

Last call! Secure your stack and shape the future! Help dev teams across the globe navigate their software supply chain security challenges.

Modernize your data layer. Learn how to design cloud-native database architectures to meet the evolving demands of AI and GenAI workloads.

Releasing software shouldn't be stressful or risky. Learn how to leverage progressive delivery techniques to ensure safer deployments.

Avoid machine learning mistakes and boost model performance! Discover key ML patterns, anti-patterns, data strategies, and more.

Related

  • Keep Your Application Secrets Secret
  • A Deep Dive Into Distributed Tracing
  • Building REST API Backend Easily With Ballerina Language
  • Understanding the Fan-Out/Fan-In API Integration Pattern

Trending

  • Blue Skies Ahead: An AI Case Study on LLM Use for a Graph Theory Related Application
  • Concourse CI/CD Pipeline: Webhook Triggers
  • Medallion Architecture: Why You Need It and How To Implement It With ClickHouse
  • DGS GraphQL and Spring Boot
  1. DZone
  2. Data Engineering
  3. Databases
  4. An Intro to Realtime APIs Using Pushpin

An Intro to Realtime APIs Using Pushpin

In this article, we briefly introduce Pushpin, a proxy server for creating Realtime APIs and push notifications, and explain how to use it with your web app.

By 
Jeffrey Lee user avatar
Jeffrey Lee
·
Sep. 01, 17 · Opinion
Likes (6)
Comment
Save
Tweet
Share
8.2K Views

Join the DZone community and get the full member experience.

Join For Free

Realtime APIs are at the center stage of web and app development because more and more users expect realtime experiences. The traditional transactional request and response APIs may work if you don’t need up-to-the-minute data, but if you broadcast live triathlon results, you know your users want realtime updates to the scoreboards (an actual application by the way). 

There are many popular realtime services that developers can use like Pushpin, Pusher, and Streamdata.io. If you’re truly interested, the ProgrammableWeb offers a large API Directory with more examples of realtime APIs and others.

This article introduces you to realtime APIs with Pushpin, a drop-in reverse proxy server that pins clients’ connections open, making realtime push easy. Here is an example of how Pushpin fits into an application structure:

Image title

Pushpin Pushes Data

Pushpin, a reverse proxy and open-sourced version of Fanout, is dropped between the backend web server and client. It then communicates with the backend using short-lived HTTP requests. After the backend gives a confirmation to push the data, Pushpin’s private control API will push the data by making an HTTP Post request. Pushpin will then send this data to the clients’ connections as necessary.

Pushpin is also a unique realtime push solution because it addresses API creators’ needs:

Image title

Pushpin With API Management

Pushpins’ architecture allows it to be easily integrated into a team’s current API management system. Many API management systems function as a proxy server already, a developer would just need to connect the proxies together. Pushpin is also placed in front of the API management system so that the system doesn’t undergo long-lived connections. And since Pushpin can translate WebSocket protocol to HTTP, the API management system can operate on the translated data easily.

All in all

An open source API like Pushpin promotes collaboration and innovation by allowing developers to experiment with new integrations. In the coming weeks, I’ll explain more uses of realtime APIs using Pushpin and other API tools. Check out my profile for more.

API Management system Data (computing) Open source push Web server application Requests dev

Published at DZone with permission of Jeffrey Lee, DZone MVB. See the original article here.

Opinions expressed by DZone contributors are their own.

Related

  • Keep Your Application Secrets Secret
  • A Deep Dive Into Distributed Tracing
  • Building REST API Backend Easily With Ballerina Language
  • Understanding the Fan-Out/Fan-In API Integration Pattern

Partner Resources

×

Comments
Oops! Something Went Wrong

The likes didn't load as expected. Please refresh the page and try again.

ABOUT US

  • About DZone
  • Support and feedback
  • Community research
  • Sitemap

ADVERTISE

  • Advertise with DZone

CONTRIBUTE ON DZONE

  • Article Submission Guidelines
  • Become a Contributor
  • Core Program
  • Visit the Writers' Zone

LEGAL

  • Terms of Service
  • Privacy Policy

CONTACT US

  • 3343 Perimeter Hill Drive
  • Suite 100
  • Nashville, TN 37211
  • support@dzone.com

Let's be friends:

Likes
There are no likes...yet! 👀
Be the first to like this post!
It looks like you're not logged in.
Sign in to see who liked this post!