proxy-buffering

Description

The proxy-buffering Plugin disables nginx proxy buffering for the configured route. When proxy buffering is disabled, nginx streams the upstream response directly to the client without accumulating it in memory or on disk first.

This is particularly useful for:

• Server-Sent Events (SSE): Clients must receive events in real time; buffering would delay or break the stream.
• Streaming APIs: Large or indefinite response bodies must flow continuously without waiting for the full body.
• Real-time data delivery: Any use case requiring low-latency delivery of partial responses.

Attributes

Examples

The examples below demonstrate how you can configure the proxy-buffering Plugin for different scenarios.

:::note You can fetch the admin_key from config.yaml and save to an environment variable with the following command:

admin_key=$(yq '.deployment.admin.admin_key[0].key' conf/config.yaml | sed 's/"//g')

:::

Disable Proxy Buffering for Streaming Responses

The following example disables proxy buffering for a route that serves Server-Sent Events (SSE):

curl -i http://127.0.0.1:9180/apisix/admin/routes/1 \
  -H "X-API-KEY: $admin_key" -X PUT -d '
{
    "uri": "/sse",
    "plugins": {
        "proxy-buffering": {
            "disable_proxy_buffering": true
        }
    },
    "upstream": {
        "type": "roundrobin",
        "nodes": {
            "127.0.0.1:1980": 1
        }
    }
}'

Send a request to the route:

curl -i -N -H "Accept: text/event-stream" http://127.0.0.1:9080/sse

Because disable_proxy_buffering is true, nginx streams each SSE event from the upstream to the client as it arrives, without buffering.

Delete Plugin

To remove the proxy-buffering Plugin, delete the corresponding JSON configuration from the Plugin configuration. APISIX will automatically reload and you do not have to restart for this to take effect.

curl -i http://127.0.0.1:9180/apisix/admin/routes/1 \
  -H "X-API-KEY: $admin_key" -X PUT -d '
{
    "uri": "/sse",
    "upstream": {
        "type": "roundrobin",
        "nodes": {
            "127.0.0.1:1980": 1
        }
    }
}'