Http connection timeout on Android not working

Question

I'm writing an application that connects to a webservice and I don't want it to wait too long if it can't get a connection. I therefore set the connectionTimeout of the httpparams. But it doesn't seem to have any effect whatsoever.

To test I turn of my WLAN temporarily. The application tries to connect for quite some time (way more than the 3 seconds I want) and then throws an UnknownHostException.

Here is my code:

try{
    HttpClient httpclient = new DefaultHttpClient();
    HttpParams params = httpclient.getParams();
    HttpConnectionParams.setConnectionTimeout(params, 3000);
    HttpConnectionParams.setSoTimeout(params, 3000);

    httppost = new HttpPost(URL);
    StringEntity se = new StringEntity(envelope,HTTP.UTF_8);
    httppost.setEntity(se);
    //Code stops here until UnknownHostException is thrown.
    BasicHttpResponse httpResponse = (BasicHttpResponse) httpclient.execute(httppost);

    HttpEntity entity = httpResponse.getEntity();
    return entity;

}catch (Exception e){
    e.printStackTrace();
}

Anyone have any ideas what I missed?

Answer 1

Try to do it this way:

HttpPost httpPost = new HttpPost(url);
StringEntity se = new StringEntity(envelope,HTTP.UTF_8);
httpPost.setEntity(se);

HttpParams httpParameters = new BasicHttpParams();
// Set the timeout in milliseconds until a connection is established.
int timeoutConnection = 3000;
HttpConnectionParams.setConnectionTimeout(httpParameters, timeoutConnection);
// Set the default socket timeout (SO_TIMEOUT) 
// in milliseconds which is the timeout for waiting for data.
int timeoutSocket = 3000;
HttpConnectionParams.setSoTimeout(httpParameters, timeoutSocket);

DefaultHttpClient httpClient = new DefaultHttpClient(httpParameters);
BasicHttpResponse httpResponse = (BasicHttpResponse)  httpClient.execute(httpPost);

HttpEntity entity = httpResponse.getEntity();
return entity;

You then can catch a possible ConnectTimeoutException.