Inconsistent Behavior with HttpClient Timeouts in Java 11 When Handling Slow Responses
I'm upgrading from an older version and I'm building a feature where I tried several approaches but none seem to work. I'm working with an scenario with the `HttpClient` from Java 11 where the timeout settings seem to be inconsistently applied when making requests to a slow server. My application is set up to use a timeout of 2 seconds for the connection and 5 seconds for the response. However, in some cases, it appears to hang indefinitely instead of timing out as expected. Here is the code snippet I'm using to configure the `HttpClient`: ```java import java.net.http.HttpClient; import java.net.http.HttpRequest; import java.net.http.HttpResponse; import java.time.Duration; public class HttpClientExample { public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception { HttpClient client = HttpClient.newBuilder() .connectTimeout(Duration.ofSeconds(2)) .build(); HttpRequest request = HttpRequest.newBuilder() .uri(URI.create("http://slow-server.com/api/resource")) .timeout(Duration.ofSeconds(5)) .build(); try { HttpResponse<String> response = client.send(request, HttpResponse.BodyHandlers.ofString()); System.out.println(response.body()); } catch (Exception e) { System.err.println("Request failed: " + e.getMessage()); } } } ``` I’ve confirmed that the server sometimes takes longer than 5 seconds to respond, but my expectation was that the `timeout` setting in the `HttpRequest` would handle this gracefully. Instead, I'm finding that the application freezes, and the `catch` block is not triggered as I anticipated. I've also tried tweaking the timeout settings and implementing an `ExecutorService` to manage the request execution, but the behavior still continues. Additionally, I'm running this code on Java 11.0.11 and have also checked the configuration of the server to ensure it is not causing the delays. Has anyone else experienced similar issues with `HttpClient` timeouts? What am I missing here? Is there a better approach? What's the best practice here? I'm working in a macOS environment. Thanks for taking the time to read this!