TCP connection is not reused for HTTP requests with HttpURLConnection

Question

I\'m have created an application which sends GET requests to a URL, and then downloads the full content of that page.

The client sends a GET to e.g. stackoverflow.c

Answer 1

Found the problem! I was not reading the input stream properly. This caused the input stream objects to hang, and they could not be reused.

I only defined it, like this:

InputStreamReader isr = new InputStreamReader(connection.getInputStream());

but I never read from it :-)

I changed the read method as well. Instead of a buffered reader I stole this:

InputStream in = null; 
String queryResult = "";
try {
     URL url = new URL(archiveQuery);
     HttpURLConnection urlConn = (HttpURLConnection) url.openConnection();
     HttpURLConnection httpConn = (HttpURLConnection) urlConn;
     httpConn.setAllowUserInteraction(false);
     httpConn.connect();
     in = httpConn.getInputStream();
     BufferedInputStream bis = new BufferedInputStream(in);
     ByteArrayBuffer baf = new ByteArrayBuffer(50);
     int read = 0;
     int bufSize = 512;
     byte[] buffer = new byte[bufSize];
     while(true){
         read = bis.read(buffer);
         if(read==-1){
           break;
         }
         baf.append(buffer, 0, read);
     }
     queryResult = new String(baf.toByteArray());
     } catch (MalformedURLException e) {
          // DEBUG
          Log.e("DEBUG: ", e.toString());
     } catch (IOException e) {
          // DEBUG
          Log.e("DEBUG: ", e.toString());
     } 
}

From here: Reading HttpURLConnection InputStream - manual buffer or BufferedInputStream?

Answer 2

HttpURLConnection will reuse connections if it can!

For this to work, several preconditions need to be fulfilled, mostly on the server side. Those preconditions are described in the article linked to above.