Stop an HttpURLConnection connecting

Question

This question was asked and answered some time ago link. However the answer did not help me yet. I am in sort of the same position as the OP of the other post: I have an Asynctask in which I make a connection to a certain website, however, most of the time the connection will take some time due to a laggy internetconnection. I want the user to be able to stop trying to connect at any time.

public class DownloadWebHtml extends AsyncTask<String, Void, Map<String,ArrayList<ArrayList<String>>>> {        
        HttpURLConnection con = null;

        @Override
        protected void onPreExecute(){
            Button but = (Button) findViewById(301);
            but.setOnClickListener(new View.OnClickListener() {
                @Override
                public void onClick(View v) {
                    cancel(true);
                    con.disconnect();
                }
            });
        }

        @Override
        protected Map<String, ArrayList<ArrayList<String>>> doInBackground(String... urlcodes) {
            //stuff
            BufferedReader in = null;
            try {
                URL url = new URL("some url");
                con = (HttpURLConnection) url.openConnection();
                in = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(con.getInputStream(),Charset.forName("ISO-8859-1")));
                String line = "";
                while ((line = in.readLine()) != null && !isCancelled()) {
                    html.add(line);
                }
                in.close();
            } catch (MalformedURLException e) {
                return null;
            } catch (IOException e) {
                return null;
            } finally {
                con.disconnect();
                 if (in != null) {
                     try {
                         in.close();
                     } catch (IOException e) {
                         Log.d("gettxt", e.getMessage());
                     }
                 }
            }

            if(!html.isEmpty()) {
                return //stuff;
            }
            return null;

        }

        @Override
        protected void onCancelled(){
            //cancellation
        }


    //onpostexecute doing stuff
}

Whenever the button is pressed the whole AsyncTask will by cancelled only after a connection has been made. Is it possible to immediately stop the whole process on a button press? Can it be done using the default httpurlconnection?

I tried using the disconnect to trigger an exception while the con.getInputStream is busy, but it failed to work.

Answer 1

I recommend switching to Apache's HTTP Components. It works a charm, and has a thread-safe abort method, as outlined here.