Wait for method that doesn't return

Question

Hi,
I have a static method consisting of a few lines of code that create a response to the caller of the method.
My problem is that the method doesn't always use the same amount of time to execute. I don't ever want to keep the caller of the method waiting for more than a specified amount of time e.g. 30 seconds. If it hasn't returned after that I want to abort and return controll to the caller.
What's the best way to solve that problem?
I've been thinking about starting a Thread in the method and execute the code there. That way, if the Thread hasn't finished executing after 30 sec I can kill it and return controll to the caller. But I'm not sure how that will work since the method is static. I have little experiense working with threads and no experiense working with threads in a static method.
There are no static class variables involved. Two arguments are passed to the method, one URL and one String and it returns a String.
Any id�as or suggestions?
Kind regards,
Mattias

Answer 1

The method run in Worker looks like this:
public void run() {
  try {
      HttpURLConnection connection = HTTPSclient.getConnection(url, authorization);
      // Other configuration
      connection.setRequestMethod( "GET" );
      connection.setRequestProperty( "Content-Type", "text/xml" );
      connection.setUseCaches( false );
      //Get the response from the server and write it to a String
      BufferedReader br = new BufferedReader( new InputStreamReader( connection.getInputStream() ) );
      String tempLine;
      String str = "";
      while( ( tempLine = br.readLine() ) != null ) {
        str += tempLine + "\n";
      result = URLDecoder.decode( str, "UTF-8" );
    } catch (IOException e) {
        System.err.println("caught");
        exception = e;
}The static method getConnection looks like this:
HttpsURLConnection getConnection(URL url, String authorization) throws IOException  {
  // first ensure that at the very least a secure protocol has been specified.
  HttpsURLConnection connection;
  String protocol = url.getProtocol();
  if (!"https".equals(protocol)) {
    throw new IOException("The URL for the server must use the HTTPS protocol.");
  // This HostnameVerifier is used to bypass SSL verification.
  HostnameVerifier hv = new HostnameVerifier() {
    public boolean verify(String urlHostName, SSLSession session) {
      return true;
  HttpsURLConnection.setDefaultHostnameVerifier(hv);
  // Configure our connection to use the basic authentication details provided by the user
  connection = (HttpsURLConnection) url.openConnection();
  // Configure our connection to use the basic authentication details provided by the user
  if(authorization != null) {
    String auth = (new BASE64Encoder()).encode(authorization.getBytes());     
    connection.setRequestProperty("Authorization", "Basic ".concat(String.valueOf(auth)));
  return connection;
}And it is this call that blocks:
BufferedReader br = new BufferedReader( new InputStreamReader( connection.getInputStream() ) );There is ( as far as I can see ) no support for setting timeouts in HttpsURLConnection or its super class URLConnection. In version 1.5 this support seem to exist but unfortunately I'm still forced to use version 1.4.2 :(
Any suggestions on how to break this block on connection.getInputSTream()?