Interrupt HttpURLConnection request Android
android, httpurlconnection, interrupt, multithreading, stream
Solution
`connection.getInputStream()` will return as soon as a connection is established with the server and the client is ready to start streaming the response.
So it depends on the connection: if you're e.g. downloading a large file, then most (nearly all) of the time should be spent inside the `readFully()` method while it is streamed, while if the response is extremely short of empty then `readFully()` will do very little.
In the first case, the easiest way to "interrupt" is to set a boolean flag and check it inside the loop.
while ((bytesRead = input.read(buffer)) != -1)
{
if (cancelled)
return null;
output.write(buffer, 0, bytesRead);
}
This "boolean flag" can be the `isCancelled()` method if you're implementing this inside an `AsyncTask`'s `doInBackground()` (recommended).
In the second case, there's not much you can do, short of killing the thread outright (not recommended at all).
Problem
I am creating simple class which sends requests using HttpURLConnection to server and receive responses. I want to add interrupt() method which interrupt current request (imagine request is running in AsyncTask and interrupt() is called from main thread). There are 2 processes which takes a lot of time and I don't know how to interrupt them: - writing to output stream - reading from input stream So let's say that I want to for example interrupt reading from input stream which I read like this: ``` downloadThread = new Thread(new Runnable() { @Override public void run() { try { buffer = readFully(connection.getInputStream()); } catch( Exception e ) { e.printStackTrace(); } } }); downloadThread.start(); ``` And readFully() method is: ``` public byte[] readFully(InputStream input) throws IOException { byte[] buffer = new byte[8192]; int bytesRead; ByteArrayOutputStream output = new ByteArrayOutputStream(); while ((bytesRead = input.read(buffer)) != -1) { output.write(buffer, 0, bytesRead); } return output.toByteArray(); } ``` How can I stop reading from input stream (in other words, downloading) ? stop() method of Thread is deprecated and cannot be used. There are written everywhere that I should regularly check if thread should be stopped and stop it manually. But how can I do that when whole time takes this line (If I understand well): ``` connection.getInputStream() ``` I think this is the same kind of question but it is unanswered (see comments of solution): How to stop HttpURLConnection connect on Android Please, don't refer me to some REST library. I would really like to know how to handle this issue. Thanks ;).