I'm implementing Server-Sent Events using Servlet 3.0's javax.servlet.AsyncContext interface.
However I can't understand how I should handle I/O errors like peer disconnect.
For a given AsyncContext ac = request.startAsync()
, I can call ac.getResponse().getWriter().print(something)
and then ac.getResponse.getWriter().flush()
and it works fine. However when a client disconnects, I don't get an error - even if I attach a listener, its onError
method is not called.
I tested it with both Jetty 8 and Tomcat 7 and it seems that the disconnect from the client is not reported back to the application.
What can be done to detect a communication error?
The problem is that: ac.getResponse.getWriter().flush()
does not throw IOException
So in order to get a error notification upon I/O operation you need to use ServletOutputStream
instead:
try {
ServletOutputStream out = ac.getResponse().getOutputStream();
out.print(stuff);
out.flush(); // throws IOException
}
catch(IOException e) {
// handle a error
}
There's an alternative solution, in cases where it's more convenient to use getWriter()
.
PrintWriter out = ac.getResponse().getWriter();
out.print(stuff);
out.flush(); // swallows IOException
if (out.checkError()) {
// handle error or throw out...
}
That is, the PrintWriter class does provide a method to retrieve write errors later.