Question

I need to make about 15 calls to diferent web services (php) at the application startup.

I’m using the following code for the post

public static String post(String url, List<BasicNameValuePair> 
           postvalues, HttpClient httpclient) {
    try {
        if (httpclient == null) {
            httpclient = new DefaultHttpClient();
        }
        HttpPost httppost = new HttpPost(url);

        if ((postvalues == null)) {
            postvalues = new ArrayList<BasicNameValuePair>();
        }
        httppost.setEntity(new UrlEncodedFormEntity(postvalues, "UTF-8"));

        // Execute HTTP Post Request
        HttpResponse response = httpclient.execute(httppost);
        return requestToString(response);
    } catch (Exception e) {
        e.printStackTrace();
        return null;
    }

}



private static String requestToString(HttpResponse response) {
    String result = "";
    try {
        InputStream in = response.getEntity().getContent();
        BufferedReader reader = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(in));
        StringBuilder str = new StringBuilder();
        String line = null;
        while ((line = reader.readLine()) != null) {
            str.append(line + "\n");
        }
        in.close();
        result = str.toString();
    } catch (Exception ex) {
        result = "Error";
    }
    return result;
}

The problem is that some of the petitions must be requested in a given order and each request takes about 1-2 second so the “Loading splash” takes about 10 seconds.

So my question is:Since all the connections are to the same server, how can I improve this delay? Is there some way of open a connection and send all the petitions through that “tunnel” reducing the delay?

NOTE: I tested the code and the requests take the same time reusing the httpclient using a new one in each connection

Thanks

Answer 1

What you have in mind is a HTTP persistent connection which reuses the TCP connection.

About this topic there is already a good question & answer here on Stackoverflow:

Persistent HttpURLConnections on Android