Servlet Reader time out - Safari specific

Question

I have a jsp that allows users to upload files via a secure form and the standard html <input type=�file� � > tag.
For complex reasons I need to get the contents of the HttpServletRequest into a character array. Basically my code looks like this:
BufferedReader reader = request.getReader();
char[] ba = (char[]) Array.newInstance(char.class, MAX_FILE_SIZE);
int total = 0;
int charsRead =0;
while ((charsRead = reader.read(ba, total, 1024)) > -1)
          total += charsRead;
     }When the request is submitted by a Safari browser, approximately 70% of the time, the very first reader.read does not return a result. After about 2 minutes, I get a SocketTimeoutException. On the client side, Safari shows a �loading �.� Message and after 5 minutes reverts to a blank screen � unsurprisingly since the server never serves up a response.
By way of comparison, when the transaction is successful, the process takes less than 1 second.
java.net.SocketTimeoutException: Read timed out
     at java.net.SocketInputStream.socketRead0(Native Method)
     at java.net.SocketInputStream.read(SocketInputStream.java(Compiled Code))
     at com.ibm.ws.io.Stream.read(Stream.java(Compiled Code))
     at com.ibm.ws.io.ReadStream.read(ReadStream.java(Compiled Code))
     at com.ibm.ws.http.ContentLengthInputStream.read(ContentLengthInputStream.java(Compiled Code))
     at com.ibm.ws.io.ReadStream.read(ReadStream.java(Compiled Code))
     at com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.http.HttpConnection.read(HttpConnection.java:342)
     at com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.srp.SRPConnection.read(SRPConnection.java:200)
     at com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.srt.SRTInputStream.read(SRTInputStream.java:80)
     at com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.srt.http.HttpInputStream.read(HttpInputStream.java:312)
     at java.io.InputStream.read(InputStream.java(Compiled Code))
     at sun.nio.cs.StreamDecoder$ConverterSD.implRead(StreamDecoder.java(Compiled Code))
     at sun.nio.cs.StreamDecoder.read(StreamDecoder.java(Compiled Code))
     at java.io.InputStreamReader.read(InputStreamReader.java(Compiled Code))
     at java.io.BufferedReader.fill(BufferedReader.java(Compiled Code))
     at java.io.BufferedReader.read1(BufferedReader.java(Compiled Code))
     at java.io.BufferedReader.read(BufferedReader.java(Compiled Code))
�This problem occurs regardless of file size and even if Safari is told to report itself as firefox. This problem has not once occurred with any of IE 5,6 or 7 or Firefox 1.* and 2.*
I have not been able to test this with Safari 3 Beta for Mac or Windows.
Environment:
Client is Mac OS-X 10.4.10 with Safari: 2.0.4
Server is Websphere 5.1
Can anyone suggest a solution to this problem?

Answer 1

As I said, it depends on what a request looks like. You have to know.
whether the stream is emptyThat's not the same thing as getting the end of the request. Bits of the request can be arbitrary delayed for all sorts of reasons.
You have to parse the request. Or send it after a length word. Or use a self-describing protocol like serialization, or writeUTF(), or XML,...