HTTP Post requests using HttpClient take 2 seconds, why?

Question

Update: Found the answer myself, see below :-)

Hi,

I\'am currently coding an android app that submits stuff in the background usin

Answer 1

Allright, I solved this myself with some more investigation. All I had to do was to add a parameter that sets the HTTP Version to 1.1, as follows:

HttpParams params = new BasicHttpParams();
params.setParameter(CoreProtocolPNames.PROTOCOL_VERSION, HttpVersion.HTTP_1_1);
HttpClient httpclient = new DefaultHttpClient(params);

I found this thanks to the very nice HttpHelper Class from and-bookworm and some trial-and-error.

If I remember correctly, HTTP 1.0 opens a new TCP connection for every request. Does that explain the large delay?

A HTTP POST request now takes between 50 and 150 ms over WLAN and something between 300 and 500 ms over 3G.

Answer 2

i am not on android, but i faced exactly the same kind of problem on windows platform with httpclient 4.0.1, after quite a bit of head scratching, i found the solution.

HttpParams params = new BasicHttpParams();
//this how tiny it might seems, is actually absoluty needed. otherwise http client lags for 2sec.
HttpProtocolParams.setVersion(params, HttpVersion.HTTP_1_1);
HttpClient httpClient = new DefaultHttpClient(params);
HttpResponse httpResponse;


HttpPost httpPost = new HttpPost("http://"+server+":"+port+"/");
StringEntity entity = new StringEntity(content, "utf-8");
entity.setContentType("text/plain; charset=utf-8"); 
httpPost.setEntity(entity);

httpResponse=httpClient.execute(httpPost);

String response = IOUtils.toString(httpResponse.getEntity().getContent(),encoding);
httpResponse.getEntity().consumeContent();

httpClient.getConnectionManager().shutdown();
return(response);

i have no idea why setting the parameters with HTTP1.1 version solves the problem. but it does. also even weirder, the symptom did not show if executing an HTTP Get request.

anyhow, i hope this helps some out there !

h