How should I handle server timeouts and error code responses to an http post in Android App?

Question

My Android App does http posts to URLs like http://example.com/abc.php?email=abc@xyz.com So the Android App basically talks to PHPs on the server side and receives JSON response

Answer 1

As Kaj said in the comment, one option is to catch the exception, and perhaps retry or post a failure message.

For response codes != 200, just read them an do your job inside an if (con.getResponseCode() == 200) block

Another alternative option, is to use the much nicer Apache classes:

http://developer.android.com/reference/org/apache/http/package-summary.html

For a snippet, check BalusC's tutorial here in SO: Using java.net.URLConnection to fire and handle HTTP requests

Answer 2

Adding to the very good suggestions so far...

My work associate taught me to use classes from the org.apache.http package like this:

String result = null;
HttpGet request = new HttpGet(some_uri);

// As Jeff Sharkey does in the android-sky example, 
// use request.setHeader to optionally set the User-Agent header.

HttpParams httpParams = new BasicHttpParams();
int some_reasonable_timeout = (int) (30 * DateUtils.SECOND_IN_MILLIS);
HttpConnectionParams.setConnectionTimeout(httpParams, some_reasonable_timeout);
HttpConnectionParams.setSoTimeout(httpParams, some_reasonable_timeout);
HttpClient client = new DefaultHttpClient(httpParams);

try
{
  HttpResponse response = client.execute(request);
  StatusLine status = response.getStatusLine();
  if (status.getStatusCode() == HttpStatus.SC_OK)
  {
    ResponseHandler<String> responseHandler = new BasicResponseHandler();
    result = responseHandler.handleResponse(response);
  }
  else
  {
    // Do something else, if wanted.
  }
}
catch (ClientProtocolException e)
{
  Log.e(LOG_TAG, "HTTP Error", e);
  // Do something else, if wanted.
}
catch (IOException e)
{
  Log.e(LOG_TAG, "Connection Error", e);
  // Do something else, if wanted.
}
finally
{
  client.getConnectionManager().shutdown();
}

// Further parse result, which may well be JSON.

Answer 3

You should also make sure you're not doing lengthy tasks like HTTP requests in the UI thread.