Implementing keep-alive messages in Netty using WriteTimeoutHandler

Question

I am using Netty 3.2.7. I am trying to write functionality in my client such that if no messages are written after a certain amount of time (say, 30 seconds), a "keep-alive" message is sent to the server.

After some digging, I found that WriteTimeoutHandler should enable me to do this. I found this explanation here: https://issues.jboss.org/browse/NETTY-79.

The example given in the Netty documentation is:

public ChannelPipeline getPipeline() {
     // An example configuration that implements 30-second write timeout:
     return Channels.pipeline(
         new WriteTimeoutHandler(timer, 30), // timer must be shared.
         new MyHandler());
 }

In my test client, I have done just this. In MyHandler, I also overrided the exceptionCaught() method:

public void exceptionCaught(ChannelHandlerContext ctx, ExceptionEvent e) {
    if (e.getCause() instanceof WriteTimeoutException) {
        log.info("Client sending keep alive!");
        ChannelBuffer keepAlive = ChannelBuffers.buffer(KEEP_ALIVE_MSG_STR.length());
        keepAlive.writeBytes(KEEP_ALIVE_MSG_STR.getBytes());
        Channels.write(ctx, Channels.future(e.getChannel()), keepAlive);
    }
}

No matter what duration the client does not write anything to the channel, the exceptionCaught() method I have overridden is never called.

Looking at the source of WriteTimeoutHandler, its writeRequested() implementation is:

public void writeRequested(ChannelHandlerContext ctx, MessageEvent e)
        throws Exception {

    long timeoutMillis = getTimeoutMillis(e);
    if (timeoutMillis > 0) {
        // Set timeout only when getTimeoutMillis() returns a positive value.
        ChannelFuture future = e.getFuture();
        final Timeout timeout = timer.newTimeout(
                new WriteTimeoutTask(ctx, future),
                timeoutMillis, TimeUnit.MILLISECONDS);

        future.addListener(new TimeoutCanceller(timeout));
    }

    super.writeRequested(ctx, e);
}

Here, it seems that this implementation says, "When a write is requested, make a new timeout. When the write succeeds, cancel the timeout."

Using a debugger, it does seem that this is what is happening. As soon as the write completes, the timeout is cancelled. This is not the behavior I want. The behavior I want is: "If the client has not written any information to the channel for 30 seconds, throw a WriteTimeoutException."

So, is this not what WriteTimeoutHandler is for? This is how I interpreted it from what I've read online, but the implementation does not seem to work this way. Am I using it wrong? Should I use something else? In our Mina version of the same client I am trying to rewrite, I see that the sessionIdle() method is overridden to achieve the behavior I want, but this method is not available in Netty.

Answer 1

For Netty 4.0 and newer, you should extend ChannelDuplexHandler like in example from IdleStateHandler documentation :

 // An example that sends a ping message when there is no outbound traffic
 // for 30 seconds.  The connection is closed when there is no inbound traffic
 // for 60 seconds.

 public class MyChannelInitializer extends ChannelInitializer<Channel> {
     @Override
     public void initChannel(Channel channel) {
         channel.pipeline().addLast("idleStateHandler", new IdleStateHandler(60, 30, 0));
         channel.pipeline().addLast("myHandler", new MyHandler());
     }
 }

 // Handler should handle the IdleStateEvent triggered by IdleStateHandler.
 public class MyHandler extends ChannelDuplexHandler {
     @Override
     public void userEventTriggered(ChannelHandlerContext ctx, Object evt) throws Exception {
         if (evt instanceof IdleStateEvent) {
             IdleStateEvent e = (IdleStateEvent) evt;
             if (e.state() == IdleState.READER_IDLE) {
                 ctx.close();
             } else if (e.state() == IdleState.WRITER_IDLE) {
                 ctx.writeAndFlush(new PingMessage());
             }
         }
     }
 }