Proper timeout handling with Apache HttpClient

Brian — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 14:31:31 +0000

I’ve seen some really bad things happen when developers don’t code in proper timeout handling. Occasionally I’ve been asked what the best way to handle timeouts is – so I thought I’d share my take on it:

MultiThreadedHttpConnectionManager connectionManager = new MultiThreadedHttpConnectionManager();
HttpConnectionManagerParams params = connectionManager.getParams();

params.setConnectionTimeout(connectiontimeout); //set connection timeout (how long it takes to connect to remote host)
params.setSoTimeout(sotimeout); //set socket timeout (how long it takes to retrieve data from remote host)

HttpMethodBase baseMethod = null;

try {
HttpClient httpClient = new HttpClient(connectionManager);
httpClient.getParams().setParameter("http.connection-manager.timeout", poolTimeout); //set timeout on how long we’ll wait for a connection from the pool

baseMethod = new GetMethod(…);
int statusCode = httpClient.executeMethod(…);

…
}
catch (ConnectTimeoutException cte ){
//Took too long to connect to remote host
}
catch (SocketTimeoutException ste){
//Remote host didn’t respond in time
}
catch (Exception se){
//Some other error occurred
}
finally {
if (baseMethod != null)
baseMethod.releaseConnection();
}

Aptana on Ubuntu 8.10

Brian — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 19:54:12 +0000

I was having a problem getting Aptana to run on my fresh install of Ubuntu 8.10

I lost the original error message, but it was something like

[ERROR] Invalid key
java.security.InvalidKeyException: Invalid AES key length: 26 bytes

Even though I’m running 32-bit, the solution to include an older version of xulrunner and reference it in a startup script worked like a charm.

In case this page ever dies, the trick is to install xulrunner-1.8.1.3 and use a script similar to this to start Aptana

#!/bin/sh
MOZILLA_FIVE_HOME=/usr/lib/xulrunner-1.8.1.3
if [ $LD_LIBRARY_PATH ]; then
LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$MOZILLA_FIVE_HOME:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH
else
LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$MOZILLA_FIVE_HOME
fi
export MOZILLA_FIVE_HOME LD_LIBRARY_PATH
~/aptana/AptanaStudio -vm /usr/lib/jvm/ia32-java-6-sun/jre/bin/java

For reference, I am running IBM Java 1.6

#!/bin/sh
MOZILLA_FIVE_HOME=/usr/lib/xulrunner-1.8.1.3
if [ $LD_LIBRARY_PATH ]; then
LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$MOZILLA_FIVE_HOME:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH
else
LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$MOZILLA_FIVE_HOME
fi
export MOZILLA_FIVE_HOME LD_LIBRARY_PATH
~/aptana/AptanaStudio -vm /usr/lib/jvm/ia32-java-6-sun/jre/bin/java

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Proper timeout handling with Apache HttpClient

Aptana on Ubuntu 8.10