HttpConnection hanging on Connector.open() call

[consilient_sam]

Hey, I'm new here but have searched through the forums on occasion and decided posting could be helpful.

A little about myself first....

I'm a software developer with a Company called Consilient Technologies in St. John's, NL Canada (i've noticed one of our ads in the banner at the top of the page) and I have a Bachelors degree in Computer Science. I've been working on our client/server code for sometime now.

So here is the situation:

Our blackberry client software connects to our server with an HttpConnection (usually through https - we have certificates and all that jazz) and for the majority of the time this works lovely. But sometimes the Connector.open() call will hang indefinately. This doesn't occur in the simulator. I have also just recently re-written our transport code to use Sockets to see if using the lower level objects would be of any help - same issue still occurs. I'll post the code in question below. I'm not expecting any revelations from anyone, but i'm at the end of my rope.

connection = (HttpConnection) Connector.open(hostName, Connector.READ_WRITE, true);
connection.setRequestMethod(HttpConnection.POST);
connection.setRequestProperty(PROP_CONTENT_TYPE, contentType);
connection.setRequestProperty(PROP_CONTENT_LENGTH, String.valueOf(bytesToSend.length));
connection.setRequestProperty(PROP_CONNECTION, "Close");
String locale  = System.getProperty(PROP_MICROEDITION_LOCALE);
if (locale != null) 
{
    connection.setRequestProperty(PROP_CONTENT_LANGUAGE, locale);
}
// write the client request to the OS
os = connection.openOutputStream();
os.write(bytesToSend); 
os.flush();

// read all data from the input stream
is = connection.openInputStream();
ByteArrayOutputStream baos = new ByteArrayOutputStream();
int numRead = 0;
byte[] buffer = new byte[256];
while ((numRead = is.read(buffer)) != -1)
{
   baos.write(buffer, 0, numRead);
}

Thanks for any help

[consilient_sam]

So i wasn't expecting much response, but we've been doing some more testing and it seems that if a midlet does not close it's streams/connections there are only ~7 connections available (a connection pool perhaps). So even if a seperate midlet tries to create connections, you get MaxConnections exceptions. Does anyone know of a sure-fire way to ensure that connections are always closed (besides doing the close() call in a finally block and surrounding the close's with try/catch statements)?

[jonberry]

I have seen the Max Connections issue before. I think it mostly effects the 7510 and 7520 and tends to happen when you use the escape key on the BlackBerry.

Is that what you are using?

I thought about trying to force the connection closed in the Midlets destroyApp method but never had a chance to try it.

Jon

[consilient_sam]

No we don't have either of those devices in the office. We are mostly using 7290's, 7100r's, 6210's, 7780's.... (gprs devices).

[ecarmody]

Hi consilient_sam,

Are you using a BES? If no, then check your APN settings; that will affect your ability to connect. Also, when doing socket connection, if not using BES, then you need to use "deviceside=true" as a paramter option on the connection. Both of these scenarios will result in symtops as you describe.

Cheers,
Eric