Can you explain the concept of Reactive Streams and how Akka HTTP uses Reactive Streams to implement backpressure?
Reactive Streams is an initiative for asynchronous, non-blocking data streams with built-in backpressure. It defines a standard for processing and transferring data between components while ensuring that slower components don’t get overwhelmed by faster ones.
Akka HTTP uses Reactive Streams through Akka Streams, its implementation of the Reactive Streams API. In Akka HTTP, requests and responses are represented as streams of data. When a client sends a request to a server, it’s processed as a Source (producer) emitting elements to be consumed by a Sink (consumer). Backpressure is implemented by allowing the consumer to signal its demand for data to the producer. If the consumer can’t keep up, the producer slows down or buffers data until the consumer is ready.
This approach ensures efficient resource utilization and prevents system overloads, enabling high-performance and resilient applications.
