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Discover how to efficiently handle external requests from your backend to your mobile app, ensuring real-time data updates with `WebSocket` technology.
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Optimizing Mobile App Backend Requests Using WebSocket for Real-Time Data Retrieval

In today's fast-paced digital world, especially in finance, the importance of real-time data cannot be overstated. If you're developing a mobile application that frequently refreshes to obtain updated information, you might find yourself in a challenging situation, particularly when the performance and reliability of your data retrieval processes can significantly impact user experience.

In this post, we will dive into a problem encountered by many developers: handling external requests from a backend service to efficiently retrieve real-time data for a mobile app. We’ll explore effective solutions to improve the architecture of your application to ensure it remains responsive and efficient.

Understanding the Problem

Consider a scenario where you have an Android app built on Xamarin .NET 2.1 and a backend REST API utilizing .NET 6 with MySQL. In your current setup, every time a user refreshes the dashboard page, the mobile app makes a RESTful HTTPS call to an external data endpoint. This data could involve calls to APIs such as Binance to obtain the latest BTC prices in different currencies.

Why This Approach is Suboptimal

Latency: Each refresh results in a new request, which can introduce lag.

Resource Inefficiency: Making repeated calls to the external API every time the user needs updates is resource-intensive and can lead to unnecessary load on your server and the external service.

Scalability Concerns: As the user base grows, maintaining performance under increased load can become difficult.

A Better Solution: Using WebSocket

To address these challenges, we recommend transitioning from a REST API model to a WebSocket approach.

Why WebSocket?

Real-Time Data: WebSocket allows for real-time, two-way communication between the client and server, meaning updates can be pushed to the mobile app as soon as they occur.

Reduced Latency: By maintaining an open connection, you eliminate the need for repeated requests, resulting in faster data availability.

Lower Server Load: A single connection for data streaming reduces the number of requests sent to your backend, improving overall efficiency.

Implementing the Solution

Here’s how you can efficiently implement this approach:

1. Utilize WebSocket for Data Streaming

Establish a WebSocket connection between the mobile app and your backend.

Subscribe to relevant data streams (like BTC price) from external APIs.

2. Handling Data Volume

Given the potential volume of incoming data, consider the following strategies:

Data Management: Use a server-side programming language such as Java with Spring frameworks to manage real-time data efficiently.

Data Persistence: For time-based data (like cryptocurrency prices), a database optimized for this use case is essential.

3. Choosing the Right Database

PostgreSQL with TimescaleDB:

Install PostgreSQL and apply the TimescaleDB extension for time-series data handling.

Create tables that are optimized for time-based queries.

4. Data Retrieval

When the front-end of your app is refreshed:

Execute efficient time-based queries to fetch the latest data from your TimescaleDB.

Return this data to the mobile app for display.

5. Continuous Data Streaming

Optionally, you can keep the WebSocket connection open to stream data continuously to the frontend, ensuring that users receive updates in real time without needing to refresh manually.

Conclusion

By shifting to a WebSocket model for your mobile app's backend communication and leveraging a relational database like PostgreSQL with TimescaleDB, you can significantly enhance the efficiency and responsiveness of your application. Not onl