CODEWITHSUNDEEP
httpnetty
matanox
matanox

Reputation: 13736

Netty http server responses

This is probably simple, but I couldn't figure it out. My Netty 4 based http server is causing http clients to hang on its response. It manages to send through its response payload (as observed using curl as a client) but the clients seem not to realize that the response has finished and they indefinitely wait for it to complete. Observed using curl, as well as firefox and chrome.

Only if I modify the code to close the channel (channel.close, as seen inline below), then do the clients acknowledge that the response is done. Otherwise, they just continue waiting for it to complete. I wish for the channel to stay open so that the next client request will not require opening a new connection (I wish to have keep-alive behavior), so closing the channel doesn't seem plausible. So I'm not sure how should the server mark the response as over - without closing the connection.

The server code:

val response = new DefaultFullHttpResponse(HttpVersion.HTTP_1_1, HttpResponseStatus.OK)
val buf = new StringBuilder
buf.append("hello")
response.data.writeBytes(Unpooled.copiedBuffer(buf, CharsetUtil.UTF_8))
ctx.write(response).addListener(new ChannelFutureListener(){
  def operationComplete(channelFuture: ChannelFuture){
    if (channelFuture.isSuccess){
        println("server write finished successfully")
        //channelFuture.channel.close <===== if uncommented, clients receive the response, otherwise they just keep waiting forever
    }
    else 
        println ("server write failed: " + channelFuture.cause + "\n" + channelFuture.cause.getStackTraceString)
  }
})

What am I missing??

Upvotes: 3

Views: 1910

Answers (1)

Kylar
Kylar

Reputation: 9334

You need a Content-Length header, or else the client won't know when to stop reading, and will continually poll for more data.

Upvotes: 2

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