read timeout with persistent connection

[Matthew McGowan <ma...@nynodata.no>]

Greetings,

With HttpClient, I'm using the MultiThreadedHttpConnectionManager, with
all timeout values set to 30s, and I'm seeing a problem against a server
that discards unused connections after several minutes. It seems the
connection close isn't detected by the HttpConnection.isStale() method,
which causes a delay in processing as stream reading blocks waiting for
the socket timeout.
In HttpConnection.isStale, the stream read throws a
SocketTimeoutException which indicates the socket is still alive, so the
connection is reused in HttpMethodBase.processRequest without closing
the socket first.

The request is successfully written via writeRequest, but readResponse
throws a java.net.SocketTimeoutException, after delaying for 30s. 

    private void processRequest(HttpState state, HttpConnection
connection)
    throws HttpException, IOException {
        LOG.trace("enter HttpMethodBase.processRequest(HttpState,
HttpConnection)");

		    ...

                if (!connection.isOpen()) {
			// returns true
                    LOG.debug("Opening the connection.");
                    connection.open();
                }
                writeRequest(state, connection);		
                requestSent = true;
                readResponse(state, connection);
			// the response read times out
                // the method has successfully executed
                used = true; 
                break;

There is a pattern - this happens only after connections have not been
used for a certain period of time, where I presume the origin server is
closing the unused persistent connection. If connections are reused
frequently, then there are no problems - the timeout occurs only when
connections lay idle for a few minutes. 

The externally visible behavior to users is that the request takes at
least 30s to execute - the request is retried, so it eventually
succeeds. 

Any ideas how I go about fixing this? I'm not entirely sure if this is a
problem with HTTPClient or with the origin server (which is running MS
IIS 4.0, not under my control.) 

I've included below a simple test case to demonstrate the problem. 

Thanks for any help!
mat mcgowan


import org.apache.commons.httpclient.methods.GetMethod;
import org.apache.commons.httpclient.*;

import java.io.IOException;

import junit.framework.TestCase;

public class TestJakartaHttpClient   extends TestCase
{
	public void testNorgeNo() throws InterruptedException,
IOException
	{
		httpServer("http://norge.no", 5*1000*60);
	}

	public void httpServer(String uri, int delay) throws
IOException, InterruptedException
	{
		HttpClient client = new HttpClient(new
MultiThreadedHttpConnectionManager());
		int timeout = 30*1000;
		client.setConnectionTimeout(timeout);
		client.setHttpConnectionFactoryTimeout(timeout) ;
		client.setTimeout(timeout);
        	GetMethod m = new GetMethod(uri);
		m.setStrictMode(false);
		m.setFollowRedirects(false);
		m.setDoAuthentication(false);
		m.setHttp11(true);
		// read data
		client.executeMethod(m);
		m.getResponseBody();
		Thread.sleep(delay);

		try
		{
			m = new GetMethod(uri);
			m.setStrictMode(false);
			m.setFollowRedirects(false);
			m.setDoAuthentication(false);
			m.setHttp11(true);
			client.executeMethod(m);
			m.getResponseBody();
		}
		catch (HttpRecoverableException ex)
		{
			fail(ex.toString());
		}
	}
}














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Re: read timeout with persistent connection

[Ortwin Glück <or...@nose.ch>]

There is an option to disable stale checking.

Matthew McGowan wrote:
> Any ideas how I go about fixing this? 


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