What is a Poke Event?

Owned by Andrew Rankin
Last updated: Feb 15, 2024 by Matt Dougherty
1 min read
This article pertains to: Inform (v2)

The Validic Inform Streaming API requires a persistent HTTP connection with Validic servers. If no data is generated in a five second span, Validic sends a Poke event to indicate the Stream is open and ready to send data. The Poke event acts like a heartbeat and is a quick indicator that Validic is keeping the stream connection open.

We suggest using poke events to ensure that your HTTP connection to the Validic stream does not time out. If you receive data or poke events, we suggest keeping the connection open.

An example of a Poke event is provided below:

event: poke data: {"ts":"2017-11-28T15:49:35.700Z","stream":"5a1d7a907f3b9200012c319d","members":{"count":1,"max":3}}

The "count" field in the poke event indicates how many separate connections currently exist to the stream. Validic allows up to 3 connections to a stream, as indicated by the "max":3 value.