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Chapter 30APIs: The WebSocket API

I think that WebSockets are one of the coolest APIs available in HTML5. The real strength of the WebSocket API comes to the fore when you want your clients to talk to the server through a persistent connection. This means that once the connection is opened, the server and the client can send messages to each other anytime. Gone are the days when clients used to send a message to the server and wait until the server responded back. Clearly, WebSockets eliminate the need for long polling! The API is very useful if you want to create real-time apps where clients and the server talk to each other continuously. For instance, you can build chat systems, multi-player HTML5 games and similar apps with WebSockets.

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