How to explicitly terminate http connection from server with no response header

Question

I am developing a server simulator for one of my client application. I am using GlassFish server. I have to simulate a http connection terminate condition in my server application.

Is there a way by which I can explicitly terminate a connection from server side such that client does not receive any response header. Currently I have tried many options like closing the response outputStream. But in every case a http 200 OK message is delivered to the client application. I would like to consume the http-request and do not want to return anything to the client.

I am using a simple conrtroller servlet and had overridden doGet() and doPost() functions.

Answer 1

Interesting question. Only one reliable way comes to mind: call System#exit(). This will however terminate the entire server. Not sure if this is what you've in mind.

I tried Thread#interrupt() as well in Tomcat, but the HTTP request thread was apparently (however, very reasonable) not implemented accordingly to listen on that after returning from the servlet method and it returned 200.

I tried the deprecated Thread#stop(), but this only returns a 500 with java.lang.ThreadDeath as root cause.

Answer 2

You're going to have difficulty persuading an appserver to do this, they're designed to be robust.

I suggest taking a look at Jetty, which is an embeddable and highly configurable HTTP/servlet framework which you can use as alternative to the appserver's built-in support. There's a good chance you'll be able to configure it with a customized connection handler, and hopefully perform your specific connection terminations.