[HTTPCORE-257] Connection is never reused if response is gzip with non-negative Content-Length

• Type: Bug
• Status: Closed
• Priority: Major
• Resolution: Fixed
• Affects Version/s: 4.1.1
• Fix Version/s: 4.1.4, 4.2-alpha1
• Assignee: Unassigned
• Reporter: Daniel Rabe
• Created: 12/May/11 17:16
• Updated: 05/Oct/13 20:09
• Resolved: 17/Dec/11 21:01

Description

While debugging a separate issue, I noticed that DefaultConnectionReuseStrategy is very sensitive to whether the server returns a positive content-length or content-length=-1 with chunked encoding. In particular, I saw two cases:
(1) Server returns gzip response with Content-Length=-1, chunked encoding. The connection is reused.
(2) Server returns gzip response with Content-Length=<actual-number-of-bytes-in-response> The connection is NOT reused.

This is because of the following code in DefaultConnectionReuseStrategy:

if (entity.getContentLength() < 0) {
if (!entity.isChunked() ||
ver.lessEquals(HttpVersion.HTTP_1_0))

{ // if the content length is not known and is not chunk // encoded, the connection cannot be reused return false; }

}

GzipDecompressingEntity implements its getContentLength as always returning -1. However, it is not chunked. Therefore, the connection is not reused.

I'm not sure if you would consider this a bug or a request for enhancement, but it seems to me that if the server is returning an accurate content-length, the client should be able to consume that number of bytes, then reuse the connection.