state of SSE support

[alvarobem]

Hello I want to know the state of SSE support in APISIX in the community version. It's possible to manage sse connections through APISIX? Are there any tutorials about that?

Thank you.

[dosubot[bot]]

Hi @alvarobem! I'm Dosu and I’m helping the apisix team.

SSE (Server-Sent Events) support in the APISIX community version is evolving. There is a new sse plugin proposed (but not yet merged) that will make managing SSE connections much easier by handling the necessary headers, disabling buffering, and tuning timeouts for real-time streaming from upstream services (details).

Currently, SSE is possible in APISIX but only in specific scenarios. The main example is the mcp-bridge plugin, which is designed for converting stdio-based MCP servers to HTTP SSE-based services (blog). For general SSE proxying, users have managed to get it working by manually setting headers like X-Accel-Buffering: no and increasing timeouts, but this approach can be fragile and is not officially documented (discussion, issue).

There are no official, general-purpose tutorials for SSE in the community version. Most available guides focus on the mcp-bridge use case. If you want to experiment, you can try disabling buffering and setting long timeouts on your routes, but be aware of possible connection stability issues.

If you need robust, general SSE support, keep an eye on the status of the new sse plugin, as it will provide a much better experience once released.

To reply, just mention @dosu.

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[SkyeYoung]

You can check the PR mentioned above. If you're interested, you can follow the progress of the PR and assist with the review to help implement the feature.