Reusing http connections in Golang

Question

I\'m currently struggling to find a way to reuse connections when making HTTP posts in Golang.

I\'ve created a transport and client like so:

// Crea         


        

Answer 1

If anyone is still finding answers on how to do it, this is how I am doing it.

package main

import (
    "bytes"
    "io/ioutil"
    "log"
    "net/http"
    "time"
)

var httpClient *http.Client

const (
    MaxIdleConnections int = 20
    RequestTimeout     int = 5
)

func init() {
    httpClient = createHTTPClient()
}

// createHTTPClient for connection re-use
func createHTTPClient() *http.Client {
    client := &http.Client{
        Transport: &http.Transport{
            MaxIdleConnsPerHost: MaxIdleConnections,
        },
        Timeout: time.Duration(RequestTimeout) * time.Second,
    }

    return client
}

func main() {
    endPoint := "https://localhost:8080/doSomething"

    req, err := http.NewRequest("POST", endPoint, bytes.NewBuffer([]byte("Post this data")))
    if err != nil {
        log.Fatalf("Error Occured. %+v", err)
    }
    req.Header.Set("Content-Type", "application/x-www-form-urlencoded")

    response, err := httpClient.Do(req)
    if err != nil && response == nil {
        log.Fatalf("Error sending request to API endpoint. %+v", err)
    }

    // Close the connection to reuse it
    defer response.Body.Close()

    // Let's check if the work actually is done
    // We have seen inconsistencies even when we get 200 OK response
    body, err := ioutil.ReadAll(response.Body)
    if err != nil {
        log.Fatalf("Couldn't parse response body. %+v", err)
    }

    log.Println("Response Body:", string(body))    
}

Go Playground: http://play.golang.org/p/oliqHLmzSX

In summary, I am creating a different method to create a HTTP client and assigning it to global variable and then using it to make requests. Note the

defer response.Body.Close() 

This will close the connection and set it ready for reuse again.

Hope this will help someone.