Apache HttpClient 4.5 HttpRequestRetryHandler Example

In the following example we show how to create a custom HttpRequestRetryHandler in order to enable a custom exception recovery mechanism. When using this interface, we need to implement the retryRequest method. This allows us to define a custom retry count mechanism and exception recovery mechanism. Take a look at the following tutorial.

Maven dependencies

We use maven to manage our dependencies and are using Apache HttpClient version 4.5. Add the following dependency to your project.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<project xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0"
         xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
         xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0
                             http://maven.apache.org/xsd/maven-4.0.0.xsd">

    <modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>
    <groupId>com.memorynotfound.apache.httpclient</groupId>
    <artifactId>retry-handler</artifactId>
    <version>1.0.0-SNAPSHOT</version>
    <url>https://memorynotfound.com</url>
    <name>httpclient - ${project.artifactId}</name>

    <dependencies>
        <!-- Apache HttpClient -->
        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.apache.httpcomponents</groupId>
            <artifactId>httpclient</artifactId>
            <version>4.5.2</version>
        </dependency>
    </dependencies>

    <build>
        <plugins>
            <plugin>
                <artifactId>maven-compiler-plugin</artifactId>
                <version>3.5.1</version>
                <configuration>
                    <source>1.8</source>
                    <target>1.8</target>
                </configuration>
            </plugin>
        </plugins>
    </build>

</project>

HttpRequestRetryHandler Example

We implement the HttpRequestRetryHandler interface for a custom retry -and exception recovery mechanism. This allows us to keep track of how many times a request will been sent, before we are handling it to the corresponding exception mechanism.

package com.memorynotfound.httpclient;

import org.apache.http.HttpEntityEnclosingRequest;
import org.apache.http.HttpRequest;
import org.apache.http.client.HttpRequestRetryHandler;
import org.apache.http.client.methods.HttpGet;
import org.apache.http.client.protocol.HttpClientContext;
import org.apache.http.impl.client.CloseableHttpClient;
import org.apache.http.impl.client.HttpClients;
import javax.net.ssl.SSLException;
import java.io.IOException;
import java.io.InterruptedIOException;
import java.net.UnknownHostException;

/**
 * This example demonstrates the use of {@link HttpRequestRetryHandler}.
 */
public class HttpClientRetryHandlerExample {

    public static void main(String... args) throws IOException {

        CloseableHttpClient httpclient = HttpClients.custom()
                .setRetryHandler(retryHandler())
                .build();

        try {
            HttpGet httpget = new HttpGet("http://localhost:1234");
            System.out.println("Executing request " + httpget.getRequestLine());
            httpclient.execute(httpget);
            System.out.println("----------------------------------------");
            System.out.println("Request finished");
        } finally {
            httpclient.close();
        }
    }

    private static HttpRequestRetryHandler retryHandler(){
        return (exception, executionCount, context) -> {

            System.out.println("try request: " + executionCount);

            if (executionCount >= 5) {
                // Do not retry if over max retry count
                return false;
            }
            if (exception instanceof InterruptedIOException) {
                // Timeout
                return false;
            }
            if (exception instanceof UnknownHostException) {
                // Unknown host
                return false;
            }
            if (exception instanceof SSLException) {
                // SSL handshake exception
                return false;
            }
            HttpClientContext clientContext = HttpClientContext.adapt(context);
            HttpRequest request = clientContext.getRequest();
            boolean idempotent = !(request instanceof HttpEntityEnclosingRequest);
            if (idempotent) {
                // Retry if the request is considered idempotent
                return true;
            }
            return false;
        };
    }
}

Output

The previous application prints the following messages to the console. As you can see, the application tries 5 times to execute the request, before giving up and throwing an HttpHostConnectException.

try request: 1
try request: 2
try request: 3
try request: 4
try request: 5
Exception in thread "main" org.apache.http.conn.HttpHostConnectException: Connect to localhost:1234 [localhost/127.0.0.1, localhost/0:0:0:0:0:0:0:1] failed: Connection refused

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