Glossary coding Term Page
Server-Sent Events
HTTP mechanism that keeps a connection open and sends text/event-stream messages sequentially to the client.
Core Idea
Server-Sent Events (SSE) is a browser-native standard for receiving continuous updates from an HTTP endpoint. The client sends a normal GET request, the server responds with the text/event-stream media type, and then flushes messages such as data: 42\n\n until either side closes the connection.
Why It Matters Here
Mathbong’s FastAPI walkthroughs lean on SSE to demonstrate practical streaming patterns like log tails and progress feeds. When you pair SSE with FastAPI’s StreamingResponse and adjust the keep-alive timeout, you get a reliable way to broadcast state changes without adopting a full WebSocket stack.