What happens when you make a move in lichess.org?
Lichess.org is a popular, free, and open-source chess platform that attracts millions of players worldwide. Its seamless, real-time gameplay experience must be powered by a robust backend infrastructure. In this post, we'll peek behind the curtain and explore the technical processes involved when you play a move.
To understand the flow of data when making a move, we'll start by utilizing Chrome DevTools, particularly the Network tab, which allows us to monitor communication between the client (your browser) and the server.
No surprises here, WebSockets are the obvious choice for real-time browser apps like online chess because they allow for full-duplex communication, enabling instant updates between the client and server without the overhead of repeated HTTP requests.
This message from the server acknowledges that it has received our move. Notice that the d field contains the same acknowledgment counter we sent in our move message, in this case, 1.
