Document HttpClient connection socket timeout behavior for CONNECT and SSL connections [SPR-16697]

[spring-projects-issues]

Brian Clozel opened SPR-16697 and commented

HttpComponentsClientHttpRequestFactory currently provides ways to customize different timeouts, including the setReadTimeout which sets the "socket read timeout" (in other words, the "maximum period inactivity between two consecutive data packets").

All of those are applied on the RequestConfig, which is effective only "once connection route has been fully established" (see HTTPCLIENT-1892). In case of HTTP requests that require first a SSL handshake or a CONNECT request to a proxy, the RequestConfig does not apply on the time spent waiting for a socket at that point.

This has to be configured at the HttpClient level itself, using the default SocketConfig or even configuring finer options on the connection manager itself (connection pooling behavior, per-host configuration, etc).

This clearly isn't the goal of the HttpComponentsClientHttpRequestFactory and should be dealt with using directly the HttpClient builder API.

This issue is about documenting this fact on the setConnectTimeout method.

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Affects: 5.0.5

Reference URL: spring-projects/spring-boot#11379

Issue Links:

• HttpComponentsClientHttpRequestFactory timeout with RestTemplate [SPR-16195] #20743 HttpComponentsClientHttpRequestFactory timeout with RestTemplate ("is duplicated by")

Referenced from: commits 2dde000