Guides
Guide: Polling for Results
How to implement a robust polling loop for async scan results.
A WebSocket solution is coming soon, so you can receive results as they complete instead of polling.
Why polling?
Exona scans involve live web research and multi-step analysis. This typically takes 30–120 seconds: too long for a synchronous HTTP connection to remain open. Instead, you create a scan and poll for the result.
This guide shows you how to implement a polling loop.
Basic polling loop
Production-grade version
For production systems, add a timeout, exponential backoff on errors, and proper logging.
Scanning multiple companies in parallel
Recommended poll intervals
| Scenario | Interval |
|---|---|
| Interactive (user waiting) | 5 seconds |
| Background batch | 15 seconds |
| Very large batch (100+ companies) | 30 seconds |
Polling more frequently than every 5 seconds provides no benefit and will cause you to hit the rate limit faster.