Question

I have a simple java code which gets html text from the input url:

try {
    URL url =  new URL("www.abc.com");
    // Get the  response
    BufferedReader rd = new BufferedReader(new  InputStreamReader(url.openStream()));

      while ((line  = rd.readLine()) != null) {
      String code = code + line;

     } catch (IOException  e){}

I am using this code in an android project. Now the problem comes when there is no internet connectivity. The application just halts and later gives error.

Is there some way to break this after some fixed timeout, or even return some specific string after an exception is thrown. Can you please tell me how to do that??

Answer 1

I don’t know what the default timeout is for URL, and a quick look at the javadocs doesn’t seem to reveal anything. So try using HttpURLConnection directly instead http://download.oracle.com/javase/1.5.0/docs/api/java/net/HttpURLConnection.html. This lets you set timeout values:

public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {

    URL url = new URL("http://www.google.com");

    HttpURLConnection conn = (HttpURLConnection) url.openConnection();
    conn.setConnectTimeout(5000);    // 5 seconds
    conn.setRequestMethod("GET");       
    conn.connect();
    BufferedReader rd  = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(conn.getInputStream()));

    String line;
    while ((line = rd.readLine()) != null) {
        System.out.println(line);
    }
    conn.disconnect(); 
}

You can also set a read time out as well, as well as specify behaviour re redirects and a few other things.