Why timeout value is not respected by android HttpURLConnection?

android timeout httpurlconnection
András Szepesházi picture András Szepesházi · Jul 4, 2012 · Viewed 13.9k times · Source

I have the following code block:

try {
    URL url = new URL("http://site-to-test.com/nonexistingpage.html");

    HttpURLConnection urlc = (HttpURLConnection) url.openConnection();
    urlc.setRequestProperty("User-Agent", CoreProtocolPNames.USER_AGENT);
    urlc.setRequestProperty("Connection", "close");
    urlc.setConnectTimeout(500); // timeout is in milliseconds
    urlc.connect();

    if (urlc.getResponseCode() == 404) {
        // Server was reachable
        Log.i(TAG, "Server is reachable");
    }

} catch (MalformedURLException mue) {
    Log.e(TAG, "MalformedURLException: " + mue.getMessage());
} catch (IOException e) {
    Log.e(TAG, "IOException: " + e.getMessage());
}

When the site-to-test domain is not reachable through the current network, this code blocks for about 30-40 seconds before receiving the IOException. And I specifically set the timeout value to 500ms. What am I missing here? Shouldn't the above block terminate in half a second, regardless of the network state and the site's availability?

Answer

András Szepesházi picture András Szepesházi · Jul 4, 2012

It appears that Java URLConnection provides no fail-safe timeout on reads

The solution is, as the article explains, to use a separate Thread for timing, and disconnect the HttpURLConnection manually once the timer thread is done.

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