WebSocket

WebSocket provides full-duplex communication channels over a single TCP connection, enabling real-time features like live chat, collaborative editing, notifications, and streaming data. Unlike HTTP's request-response model, WebSocket keeps the connection open so either side can send data at any time. Implementing WebSocket correctly in production requires connection management, heartbeat mechanisms, reconnection logic, authentication on the initial handshake, and graceful degradation when connections drop. AI-generated WebSocket code typically handles the happy path but ignores connection lifecycle edge cases that cause memory leaks and zombie connections at scale.