servlets: flushBuffer does not close the connection

[Andy Fish]

Hi

I have noticed that in a servlet if I do a response.flushBuffer() without
writing any content, the connection to the browser is not closed (tomcat 4
point something).

I would have thought that it is good practice to put a flushBuffer() in at
the bottom of the doGet method so that it gets called whenever there has
been no exception. I can't see anything in the spec to say flushBuffer
should only be called if you have written to the buffer.

Am I doing something stupid here? Or must I really put a flag in my code to
record whether I have written any output?

Andy

 

[Dobromir Gaydarov]

Hi

I have noticed that in a servlet if I do a response.flushBuffer() without
writing any content, the connection to the browser is not closed (tomcat 4
point something).

I do not see why you expect flushBuffer to close the connection.

I would have thought that it is good practice to put a flushBuffer() in at
the bottom of the doGet method so that it gets called whenever there has
been no exception. I can't see anything in the spec to say flushBuffer
should only be called if you have written to the buffer.

Exactly the oposite - there is no point of doing it at the end of doGet.
When the doGet returns everything will happen as it is supposed to and you
do not have to do anything about it.

Am I doing something stupid here? Or must I really put a flag in my code to
record whether I have written any output?

Well, just forget about the method for now. It is for a very specific cases
and you will probably never deal with them.

Regards,
Dobromir

 

[Andy Fish]

OK, I thought I was supposed to do it after writing any output

I'll forget the whole thing then, thanks.