Using Apache HttpClient how to set the TIMEOUT on a request and response

Question

I need to set time out for the Http Request we make to a service (not a web service). We are using Apache HTTP Client. I have added these 2 lines of code to set the time out on request and response to the service.

HttpConnectionParams.setConnectionTimeout(params, 10000);
HttpConnectionParams.setSoTimeout(params, 10000);

1) Currently I have set 10 seconds as the timeout since I see the response coming from the service almost instantaneously. Should I increase or decrease the timing?

2) What will happen when response is takes more than 10 seconds? Will it throw exception and what exception will it be? Is there any thing else I need to add to set the time out in the below code.

public HashMap<String, Object> getJSONData(String url) throw Exception{
    DefaultHttpClient httpClient = new DefaultHttpClient();
    HttpParams params = httpClient.getParams();
    HttpConnectionParams.setConnectionTimeout(params, 10000);
    HttpConnectionParams.setSoTimeout(params, 10000);
    HttpHost proxy = new HttpHost(getProxy(), getProxyPort());
    ConnRouteParams.setDefaultProxy(params, proxy);
    URI uri;
    InputStream data = null;
    try {
        uri = new URI(url);
        HttpGet method = new HttpGet(uri);
        HttpResponse response = httpClient.execute(method);
        data = response.getEntity().getContent();
    }
    catch (Exception e) {
        e.printStackTrace();
    }
    Reader r = new InputStreamReader(data);
    HashMap<String, Object> jsonObj = (HashMap<String, Object>) GenericJSONUtil.fromJson(r);
    return jsonObj;
}

Answer 1

I am guessing many people come here because of the title and because the HttpConnectionParams API is deprecated.

Using a recent version of Apache HTTP Client, you can set these timeouts using the request params:

HttpPost request = new HttpPost(url);

RequestConfig requestConfig = RequestConfig.custom()
  .setSocketTimeout(TIMEOUT_MILLIS)
  .setConnectTimeout(TIMEOUT_MILLIS)
  .setConnectionRequestTimeout(TIMEOUT_MILLIS)
  .build();

request.setConfig(requestConfig);

Alternatively, you can also set this when you create your HTTP Client, using the builder API for the HTTP client, but you'll also need to build a custom connection manager with a custom socket config.

The configuration example file is an excellent resource to find out about how to configure Apache HTTP Client.