HttpURLConnection timeout settings

I want to return false if the URL takes more then 5 seconds to connect - how is this possible using Java? Here is the code I am using to check if the URL is valid

HttpURLConnection.setFollowRedirects(false);
HttpURLConnection con = (HttpURLConnection) new URL(url).openConnection();
con.setRequestMethod("HEAD");
return (con.getResponseCode() == HttpURLConnection.HTTP_OK);

HttpURLConnection has a setConnectTimeout method.

Just set the timeout to 5000 milliseconds, and then catch java.net.SocketTimeoutException

Your code should look something like this:

try {
HttpURLConnection.setFollowRedirects(false);
HttpURLConnection con = (HttpURLConnection) new URL(url).openConnection();
con.setRequestMethod("HEAD");




con.setConnectTimeout(5000); //set timeout to 5 seconds




return (con.getResponseCode() == HttpURLConnection.HTTP_OK);
} catch (java.net.SocketTimeoutException e) {
return false;
} catch (java.io.IOException e) {
return false;
}

You can set timeout like this,

con.setConnectTimeout(connectTimeout);
con.setReadTimeout(socketTimeout);

If the HTTP Connection doesn't timeout, You can implement the timeout checker in the background thread itself (AsyncTask, Service, etc), the following class is an example for Customize AsyncTask which timeout after certain period

public abstract class AsyncTaskWithTimer<Params, Progress, Result> extends
	AsyncTask<Params, Progress, Result> {

private static final int HTTP_REQUEST_TIMEOUT = 30000;

@Override
protected Result doInBackground(Params... params) {
	createTimeoutListener();
	return doInBackgroundImpl(params);
}

private void createTimeoutListener() {
	Thread timeout = new Thread() {
		public void run() {
			Looper.prepare();

			final Handler handler = new Handler();
			handler.postDelayed(new Runnable() {
				@Override
				public void run() {

					if (AsyncTaskWithTimer.this != null
							&& AsyncTaskWithTimer.this.getStatus() != Status.FINISHED)
						AsyncTaskWithTimer.this.cancel(true);
					handler.removeCallbacks(this);
					Looper.myLooper().quit();
				}
			}, HTTP_REQUEST_TIMEOUT);

			Looper.loop();
		}
	};
	timeout.start();
}

abstract protected Result doInBackgroundImpl(Params... params);
}

A Sample for this

public class AsyncTaskWithTimerSample extends AsyncTaskWithTimer<Void, Void, Void> {
	
	@Override
	protected void onCancelled(Void void) {
		Log.d(TAG, "Async Task onCancelled With Result");
		super.onCancelled(result);
	}
	
	@Override
	protected void onCancelled() {
		Log.d(TAG, "Async Task onCancelled");
		super.onCancelled();
	}

	@Override
	protected Void doInBackgroundImpl(Void... params) {
		// Do background work
        return null;
	};
 }

I could get solution for such a similar problem with addition of a simple line

HttpURLConnection hConn = (HttpURLConnection) url.openConnection();
hConn.setRequestMethod("HEAD");

My requirement was to know the response code and for that just getting the meta-information was sufficient, instead of getting the complete response body.

Default request method is GET and that was taking lot of time to return, finally throwing me SocketTimeoutException. The response was pretty fast when I set the Request Method to HEAD.