Heartbeat & Connection Management - novig-docs

Heartbeat Mechanism

Keepalive is handled entirely at the WebSocket protocol layer (RFC 6455 control frames), not with JSON messages.

Server Ping

The server sends a protocol-level Ping frame every 15 seconds. Conformant WebSocket clients (browsers, ws, websockets, tungstenite, etc.) automatically reply with a protocol Pong frame — you don’t write any code for this.

A client that misses a full 15-second interval without a protocol Pong is disconnected.

No application-level ping/pong

There is no {"event": "ping"} / {"event": "pong"} JSON exchange. Sending a JSON text frame like that is rejected with a MALFORMED_REQUEST error frame — it does not count toward keepalive. If your client library exposes ping/pong hooks, make sure they operate on protocol frames, not text messages.

Example Implementation

import WebSocket from "ws"

const ws = new WebSocket("wss://api.novig.com/tape", {
    headers: {
        Authorization: `Bearer ${ACCESS_TOKEN}`,
    },
})

// The `ws` library answers protocol Pings automatically — no handler needed.
// Optionally observe them to monitor connection health:
ws.on("ping", () => {
    lastHeartbeat = Date.now()
})

ws.on("message", (data) => {
    const message = JSON.parse(data.toString())
    // Handle subscription acks, ticks, errors...
})

Reconnection

Implement reconnection with exponential backoff. On reconnect, re-send your subscribe messages — subscriptions do not survive a disconnect.