Question

Would the following be an appropriate way of dealing with a 503 response code in java networking? What does this code- specifically the calls to disconnect and null do?

URL url = new URL(some url);
HttpURLConnection h =(HttpURLConnection)url.openConnection();
int x = h.getResponseCode();
while(x==503)
{
    h.disconnect();
    h = null;
    h =(HttpURLConnection)url.openConnection();
    x = h.getResponseCode();
}

Answer 1

The disconnect() closes the underlying TCP socket.

Setting the local variable to null immediately before reassigning it accomplishes nothing whatsoever.

There should be a sleep in that loop, with an interval that increases on every failure, and a limited number of retries.