Graceful Shutdown in Go: Practical Patterns

Graceful Shutdown in Go: Practical Patterns Graceful shutdown in any application generally satisfies three minimum conditions: Close the entry point by stopping new requests or messages from sources like HTTP, pub/sub systems, etc. However, keep outgoing connections to third-party services like databases or caches active. Wait for all ongoing requests to finish. If a request takes too long, respond with a graceful error. Release critical resources such as database connections, file locks, or network listeners. Do any final cleanup. This article focuses on HTTP servers and containerized applications, but the core ideas apply to all types of applications. 1. Catching the Signal # Before we handle graceful shutdown, we first need to catch termination signals. These signals tell our application it’s time to exit and begin the shutdown process. So, what are signals? In Unix-like systems, signals are software interrupts. They notify a process that something has happened and it should ... Read full article.