HttpURLConnection implementation

I have read that HttpURLConnection supports persistent connections, so that a connection can be reused for multiple requests. I tried it and the only way to send a second POST was by calling openConnection for a second time. Otherwise I got a IllegalStateException("Already connected"); I used the following:

try{
URL url = new URL("http://someconection.com");
}
catch(Exception e){}
HttpURLConnection con = (HttpURLConnection) url.openConnection();
//set output, input etc
//send POST
//Receive response
//Read whole response
//close input stream
con.disconnect();//have also tested commenting this out
con = (HttpURLConnection) url.openConnection();
//Send new POST

The second request is send over the same TCP connection (verified it with wireshark) but I can not understand why (although this is what I want) since I have called disconnect. I checked the source code for the HttpURLConnection and the implementation does keep a keepalive cache of connections to the same destinations. My problem is that I can not see how the connection is placed back in the cache after I have send the first request. The disconnect closes the connection and without the disconnect, still I can not see how the connection is placed back in the cache. I saw that the cache has a run method to go through over all idle connections (I am not sure how it is called), but I can not find how the connection is placed back in the cache. The only place that seems to happen is in the finished method of httpClient but this is not called for a POST with a response. Can anyone help me on this?

EDIT My interest is, what is the proper handling of an HttpUrlConnection object for tcp connection reuse. Should input/output stream be closed followed by a url.openConnection(); each time to send the new request (avoiding disconnect())? If yes, I can not see how the connection is being reused when I call url.openConnection() for the second time, since the connec

Edit Report

Abandoning streams will cause idle TCP connections. The response stream should be read completely. Another thing I overlooked initially, and have seen overlooked in most answers on this topic is forgetting to deal with the error stream in case of exceptions. Code similar to this fixed one of my apps that wasn't releasing resources properly:

HttpURLConnection connection = (HttpURLConnection)new URL(uri).openConnection();
InputStream stream = null;
BufferedReader reader = null;
try {
        stream = connection.getInputStream();
        reader = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(stream, Charset.forName("UTF-8")));

        // do work on part of the input stream

} catch (IOException e) {

    // read the error stream
    InputStream es = connection.getErrorStream();
    if (es != null) {
        BufferedReader esReader = null;
        esReader = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(es, Charset.forName("UTF-8")));
        while (esReader.ready() && esReader.readLine() != null) {
        }
        if (esReader != null)
            esReader.close();
    }

    // do something with the IOException
} finally {

    // finish reading the input stream if it was not read completely in the try block, then close
    if (reader != null) {
        while (reader.readLine() != null) {
        }
        reader.close();
    }

    // Not sure if this is necessary, closing the buffered reader may close the input stream?
    if (stream != null) {
        stream.close();
    }

    // disconnect
    if (connection != null) {
        connection.disconnect();
    }
}

The buffered reader isn't strictly necessary, I chose it because my use case required reading one line at a time.

answered 2012-11-13T23:38:16.250

HttpURLConnection implementation

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