Question

This question is mostly an HTTP question, I am working on an iOS app, though this question is not specific to iOS.

I would like to use persistent connections, and have no problems doing so, until an HTTP response uses the chunked transfer type, instead of explicitly sending Content-Length. The response itself works normally, and would work if I never needed to cancel the response. This response can take a while to send the response(it can take minutes and will never send the final 0 chunk), and frequently, I would like to cancel this request(and response) and send a new request on the same connection.

With HTTP/1.1, how can I cancel the chunked response response without closing the connection?

My current workaround is to not use persistent connections, but then I lose all the benefits of using persistent connections, which makes initiating these requests much slower.

Answer 1

You can’t cancel it. There is nothing in the HTTP protocol that allows you to interrupt a HTTP response. You either need to read and discard the entire response or close the connection. However, you can issue another HTTP request on the same connection while the server is still sending the response, but you still have to process the entire response to the original request.