How do you set a timeout on BufferedReader and PrintWriter in Java 1.4?

Question

How does one set a timeout on a BufferedReader and a PrintWriter created using a socket connection? Here is the code I have for the server right now, which works until either the server or the client crashes:

while(isReceiving){
    str = null;
    BufferedReader br = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(socket.getInputStream()));
    PrintWriter pw = new PrintWriter(socket.getOutputStream(), true);

    while ((str = br.readLine()) != null){
        System.out.println("Processing command " + str);
        pw.println(client.message(str));
    }
}

Outside the scope of this code I have imposed a socket timeout of 1000ms, which works as intended when waiting for the initial connection. But the program blocks at (str = br.readLine()). If the client hangs or crashes, it never stops blocking unless I terminate the process (which even then doesn't always work).

The client code in question is very similar to this, and is blocking in a similar fashion.

Answer 1

You could use SimpleTimeLimiter from Google's Guava library.

Sample code (in Java 8):

BufferedReader br = ...;
TimeLimiter timeLimiter = new SimpleTimeLimiter();

try {
    String line = timeLimiter.callWithTimeout(br::readLine, 10, TimeUnit.SECONDS);
} catch (TimeoutException | UncheckedTimeoutException e) {
    // timed out
} catch (Exception e) {
    // something bad happened while reading the line
}