Persistent HttpURLConnection in Java

Question

I am trying to write a java program that will automatically download and name some of my favorite web comics. Since I will be requesting multiple objects from the same domain, I wanted to have a persistent http connection that I could keep open until all the comics have been downloaded. Below is my work-in-progress. How do I make another request from the same domain but different path without opening a new http connection?

import java.io.BufferedReader;
import java.io.IOException;
import java.io.InputStreamReader;
import java.net.HttpURLConnection;
import java.net.URL;

public class ComicDownloader
{
    public static void main(String[] args)
    {
        URL url = null;
        HttpURLConnection httpc = null;
        BufferedReader input = null;

        try
        {
            url = new URL("http://www.cad-comic.com/cad/archive/2002");
            httpc = (HttpURLConnection) url.openConnection();
            input = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(httpc.getInputStream()));
            String inputLine;

            while ((inputLine = input.readLine()) != null)
            {
                System.out.println(inputLine);
            }

            input.close();
            httpc.disconnect();
        }
        catch (IOException ex)
        {
            System.out.println(ex);
        }
    }
}

Answer 1

According to the documentation here, HTTP persistence is being handled transparently in Java, although it gives you the options to control it too via http.keepAlive and http.maxConnections system properties.

However,

The current implementation doesn't buffer the response body. Which means that the application has to finish reading the response body or call close() to abandon the rest of the response body, in order for that connection to be reused. Furthermore, current implementation will not try block-reading when cleaning up the connection, meaning if the whole response body is not available, the connection will not be reused.

Take a look at the link and see if it really helps you.

Answer 2

By default, the HttpURLConnection is smart enough to reuse a connection to the same host if keep-alive is enabled by the host.

However, the error handling is weak and you might get into a situation that client and host are out of sync and the connection simply hangs. Therefore, we always disable keep-alive.