Lock between URLConnection and System.in

[mab]

I've created a program that has two threads; one for taking user input and the other for doing HttpURLConnection communication. A sample code is attached below.

The problem is: HttpURLConnection.connect() waits for reader.readLine() that reads from the standard input to return, before connect returns.

Some diagnosis:

1. I tried using

   connection.setDoOutput(false);

   but it doesn't have an effect.
2. I tried closing the output stream (

   connection.getOutputStream().close();

   ) but it this lines throws an exception: "cannot write to a URLConnection if doOutput=false - call setDoOutput(true)"
3. I tried writing to the output stream of the connection, but it stops (waiting for the readline to return) at the

   new PrintStream(connection.getOutputStream()).print("BLAH!");

   instead and runs normally at the

   connection.connect();

4. Note that the same behavior is experienced when using URL or URLConnection instead of HttpURLConnection (as basically they're using the same stream)
5. I tried java.util.Scanner instead of BufferedStream but still the same behavior as expected.
6. One thing to note is in the original project there are other connections made and succeeds with no problem, it's always the first one that halts.

Here's sample code:

import java.io.BufferedReader;
import java.io.InputStreamReader;
import java.io.PrintStream;
import java.net.HttpURLConnection;
import java.net.URL;

public class Main {

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        try {
            Nono n = new Nono();
            Thread t = new Thread(n, "newThread");
            t.start();
            BufferedReader reader = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(System.in));
            String cmd = "";
            while (!cmd.equalsIgnoreCase("exit")) {
                System.out.print("test>");
                cmd = reader.readLine();
            }
            n.state = 1;
        } catch (Exception e) {
            System.err.println(e.getMessage());
        }
    }

    public static class Nono implements Runnable {

        public int state = 1;

        public void run() {
            try {
                while (state == 1) {
                    Thread.sleep(100);   // used to avoid overloading server
                    HttpURLConnection connection = (HttpURLConnection) new URL("http://www.google.com").openConnection();
                    //connection.setDoOutput(false);
                    //connection.getOutputStream().close();
                    //connection.setDoOutput(true);
                    //new PrintStream(connection.getOutputStream()).print("BLAH!");
                    connection.connect();
                    System.out.println("THREAD> connection established");
                    connection.disconnect();
                }
            } catch (Exception e) {
                System.err.println(e.getMessage());
            }
        }
    }
}

Thanks for your help

[mab]

It seems that all IO for a given process (including all its threads) becomes blocked for one single IO request. So the problem can be solved by calling the blocking read only when there is available data.

while (!cmd.equalsIgnoreCase("exit")) {
                System.out.print("test>");
                while (!reader.ready()) {}
                cmd = reader.readLine();
                System.out.println("echo>" + cmd);
            }

But still I was wondering if there is a smarter solution than using the availability while loop + why this problem appears only for the first URLConncetion object but not for subsequently created ones?! :confused: