How does one set a timeout on a BufferedReader and a PrintWriter created using a socket connection? Here is the code I have for the server right now, which works until either the server or the client crashes:
while(isReceiving){
str = null;
BufferedReader br = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(socket.getInputStream()));
PrintWriter pw = new PrintWriter(socket.getOutputStream(), true);
while ((str = br.readLine()) != null){
System.out.println("Processing command " + str);
pw.println(client.message(str));
}
}
Outside the scope of this code I have imposed a socket timeout of 1000ms, which works as intended when waiting for the initial connection. But the program blocks at (str = br.readLine()). If the client hangs or crashes, it never stops blocking unless I terminate the process (which even then doesn't always work).
The client code in question is very similar to this, and is blocking in a similar fashion.
You could use SimpleTimeLimiter from Google's Guava library.
Sample code (in Java 8):
BufferedReader br = ...;
TimeLimiter timeLimiter = new SimpleTimeLimiter();
try {
String line = timeLimiter.callWithTimeout(br::readLine, 10, TimeUnit.SECONDS);
} catch (TimeoutException | UncheckedTimeoutException e) {
// timed out
} catch (Exception e) {
// something bad happened while reading the line
}
An answer in this question describes an interesting method using a Timer
to close the connection. I'm not 100% sure if this works in the middle of a read, but it's worth a shot.
Copied from that answer:
TimerTask ft = new TimerTask(){
public void run(){
if (!isFinished){
socket.close();
}
}
};
(new Timer()).schedule(ft, timeout);
isFinished
should be a boolean
variable that should be set to true
when you're done reading from the stream.
Since calling socket.close() did not seem to interrupt the block at br.readLine(), I did a little workaround. When disconnecting the client from the server, I merely send through a string "bye", and told the server to close the socket connection when it receives this command.
while ((str = br.readLine()) != null){
// If we receive a command of "bye" the RemoteControl is instructing
// the RemoteReceiver to close the connection.
if (str.equalsIgnoreCase("bye")){
socket.close();
break;
}
System.out.println("Processing command " + str);
pw.println(client.message(str));
}