Timing out on large file connections using URLConnection

I thought of that, but I'm not sure if I can use HttpClient because I'm sandboxed. I thought of checking content-length but I figured that if it took that long to read the content-type header that it would be same for content-length since they're both headers. Does it read the content-length first?

And how are the timeouts supposed to be used? I assume itd be a time length til it cancels the connection, but apparently not? Unless im using it wrong. Any input on this? Thanks the assistance

HttpClient uses the same connections as does URLConnection, it just handles them for you.

Okay, I suppose I can try rolling back to that but I'd still also like to know about content-type vs content-length and the reality behind what the timeouts are all about. Thanks jwenting!

> I thought of that, but I'm not sure if I can use HttpClient because I'm sandboxed.

sandbox does not affect what you can use

> I thought of checking content-length but I figured that if it took that long to read the content-type header that it would be same for content-length since they're both headers. Does it read the content-length first?

It doesn't need to read the content to access the headers.

> And how are the timeouts supposed to be used?

They are how long it will wait for server to respond

@objects

I know headers are supposed to come before content. That's why I said content-type was taking a long time to load asif it was loading content, which is exactly the problem.

I understand the connect timeout should be until the connection is recognized, but isn't setReadTimeout how long for it to read the content? Like if its a 10mb video and your setReadTimeout is 2000ms, shouldn't it throw an error? Cause mine doesn't.

so are you not even reading the content? That doesn't sound right.

> but isn't setReadTimeout how long for it to read the content?

no how long it will wait for a read to respond

This is ulimately a threading problem. Why?

A large file is going to have the same order of number of headers as a small one. The problem is also not to do with connect or read timeout. If it were, you'd be seeing exceptions.

You're probably experiencing other networking problems and you can certainly expect to get them from time to time. What shouldn't happen is for this to become a problem for your program, having to wait. That's the threading problem.

The fetch should be done in a separate thread so that your main thread can take the appropriate action when the worker thread is kept waiting around too long

Good little chart about the differences between HTTPClient and URLConnection http://www.innovation.ch/java/HTTPClient/urlcon_vs_httpclient.html

was referring to apache httpclient

http://hc.apache.org/httpclient-3.x/

used this to get the headers without timing out. thanks.

this.hurlc.setDoOutput(true);
        try{
        	this.hurlc.setRequestMethod("HEAD");
            returnString = this.hurlc.getContentType();
            this.hurlc.disconnect();
        } catch ( ProtocolException e ){
        	// ...
        } catch ( RuntimeException e ){
        	// ...
        }

                                              

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Not everything I wanted to know, but the majority of it.