Android - setSoTimeout not working

Question

So I\'m running into a not working socket timeout. I followed all instructions given by existing posts, but its still not working (I never get a socket timeout exception). H

Answer 1

In my example two timeouts are set. The connection timeout throws "java.net.SocketTimeoutException: Socket is not connected" and the socket timeout "java.net.SocketTimeoutException: The operation timed out".

HttpGet httpGet = new HttpGet(url);
HttpParams httpParameters = new BasicHttpParams();
// Set the timeout in milliseconds until a connection is established.
// The default value is zero, that means the timeout is not used. 
int timeoutConnection = 3000;
HttpConnectionParams.setConnectionTimeout(httpParameters, timeoutConnection);
// Set the default socket timeout (SO_TIMEOUT) 
// in milliseconds which is the timeout for waiting for data.
int timeoutSocket = 5000;
HttpConnectionParams.setSoTimeout(httpParameters, timeoutSocket);

DefaultHttpClient httpClient = new DefaultHttpClient(httpParameters);
HttpResponse response = httpClient.execute(httpGet);

If you want to set the Parameters of any existing HTTPClient (e.g. DefaultHttpClient or AndroidHttpClient) you can use the function setParams().

httpClient.setParams(httpParameters);

Answer 2

See: https://stackoverflow.com/a/20031077/2609238

The problem might be in the Apache HTTP Client. See HTTPCLIENT-1098. Fixed in 4.1.2.

The timeout exception tries to reverse DNS the IP, for logging purposes. This takes an additional time until the exception is actually fired.

Answer 3

A while back I had similar problems. I've experimented a bit and noticed that when I ran my app in the emulator the timeouts didn't work and when I ran it on a real device it did work. I've tested it with the DefaultHttpClient, HttpUrlConnection and AndroidHttpClient, all three showed the same results; an IOexception (UnknownHostException) after about 20 seconds in the emulator regardless of any set timeout.

Googling revealed that other people have also reported problems with timeout:

• http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=2409
• Http connection timeout on Android not working
• http connection timeout issues
• Socket timeout when making HTTPGet requests using DefaultHTTPClient

None of the proposed solutions worked for me, so I guess the only reliable solution is to manage timeouts yourself.