How do I catch the SocketTimeoutException

Question

Say I have a socket variable called SuperSocket is there any way that I can catch the timeout exception ? ``` SuperSocket.setSoTimeout(5000); catch (SocketTimeoutException e){ System.out.println("Timeout"); System.exit(1); } ```

Accepted Answer

You seem to not understand what `setSoTimeout()` does and when that exception would be thrown.

From the Javadoc: ( http://docs.oracle.com/javase/6/docs/api/java/net/Socket.html )

public void setSoTimeout(int timeout) throws SocketException

Enable/disable SO_TIMEOUT with the specified timeout, in milliseconds. With this option set to a non-zero timeout, a read() call on the InputStream associated with this Socket will block for only this amount of time. If the timeout expires, a java.net.SocketTimeoutException is raised, though the Socket is still valid. The option must be enabled prior to entering the blocking operation to have effect. The timeout must be > 0. A timeout of zero is interpreted as an infinite timeout.

The only time a `SocketTimeoutException` can be thrown (and then caught) is when you're doing a blocking read on the `Socket`'s underlying `InputStream` and no data is received in the specified time (causing the read to ... time out).

```
superSocket.setSoTimeout(5000);
InputStream is = superSocket.getInputStream();
int i;
try {
    i = is.read();
} catch (SocketTimeoutException ste) {
    System.out.println("I timed out!");
}
```

Edit to add: There's actually one other time the exception can be thrown, and that's if you're calling the two argument version of `Socket.connect()` where you supply a timeout.

How do I catch the SocketTimeoutException

Solution

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