Problem when using the Http TimeOut system parameter in JDK 1.4

Question

Hi,
The JDK 1.4 URLConnection class seems to be caching the timeout values in JDK 1.4. Hence this result in a inflexibility of setting the timeout value once for the entire functioning of the JVM. The sample code is below
public class TestUrlConnection {
     * main method
     * @param args
     public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
          try {
               System.setProperty("sun.net.client.defaultReadTimeout","1000");
               System.out.println("Testing Connection Timeout Parse I");
               URL url =
                    new URL("http://localhost:9080/StrutsApplicationWeb/timeOutTest.do");
               HttpURLConnection conn = (HttpURLConnection) url.openConnection();
               System.out.println("Conn Type:" + conn.getContentType());
               System.out.println("Conn Encoding:" + conn.getContentEncoding());
               System.out.println("Conn Resp Code:" + conn.getResponseCode());
          } catch (SocketTimeoutException se) {
               System.out.println("Timeout parse I");
          try {
               System.setProperty("sun.net.client.defaultReadTimeout","25000");
               System.out.println("Testing Connection Timeout Parse II");
               URL url =
                    new URL("http://localhost:9080/StrutsApplicationWeb/timeOutTest.do");
               HttpURLConnection conn = (HttpURLConnection) url.openConnection();
               System.out.println("Conn Type:" + conn.getContentType());
               System.out.println("Conn Encoding:" + conn.getContentEncoding());
               System.out.println("Conn Resp Code:" + conn.getResponseCode());
          } catch (SocketTimeoutException se) {
               System.out.println("Timeout parse II");
The server is a URL that produces an delay of 20 secs. Hence as per above code the first parse should fail but the second one should succeed. As URLConnection is caching the timeout value, the code is not functioning properly. Do you guys think, it is ok for URLConnection to cache timeout values???

Answer 1

that is odd. I thought I saw the source to
HttpURLConnection once, and the default timeout is
hardcoded in the code, so there was no way of setting
the time out. maybe right, i saw that setting a system property the second time dint seem to alter the value, but made the mistake of assuming that the connection picked up the timeout value first time from the system property the first time it was defined
>
1.5 changes this.setConnectionTimeout(int)