OkHttpClient POST request fails when Request body size beyond certain limit

[saravr]

I am making a sequence of POST requests with each subsequent request passing the next token received the previous response in the request body of the new request. I am noticing that if POST HTTP request body size is beyond a certain limit, the request times out after certain number of requests in the sequence. Typical request body size is about 14KB. With OkHttpClient event listener I notice that (for the failing call)

override fun requestBodyStart(call: Call)

is invoked but not

override fun requestBodyEnd(call: Call, byteCount: Long)

Instead override fun requestFailed(call: Call, ioe: IOException) is called with Socket timeout exception.

It works if make this call before each request (but looks like a hack)

okHttpClient.connectionPool.evictAll()

Not sure if OkHTTPClient maintains some state within. Charles is showing Failure status with IO: Stream cancelled by CLIENT message.

I am using

implementation "com.squareup.okhttp3:okhttp:4.9.3"

Backend is not in my control and I cannot optimize the request body size. Apparently, a truncated-body request reaches server which doesn't response and hence the timeout. Is there a way to fix this issue. Note: If I replace OkHttp with Volley I do not see this issue.

[swankjesse]

Hmmm... not enough information to suggest any fixes here. I'm curious if your calling code is blocked waiting for the server to read?

Can you isolate this into a standalone test case?

[saravr]

@swankjesse thanks. Here is my test code. Possibly I can try using a fake server to create a standalone test.

object NetworkModule {
    private lateinit var webservice: Webservice
    private lateinit var okHttpClient: OkHttpClient

    fun initRetrofit() {
        val loggingInterceptor = HttpLoggingInterceptor()
        loggingInterceptor.setLevel(HttpLoggingInterceptor.Level.BODY)

        val builder = OkHttpClient.Builder()
        builder.addInterceptor(loggingInterceptor)
        //builder.eventListener(MyEventListener())
        okHttpClient = builder.build()

        val retrofit = Retrofit.Builder()
            .addConverterFactory(GsonConverterFactory.create())
            .baseUrl(BASE_URL)
            .client(okHttpClient)
            .build()

        webservice = retrofit.create(Webservice::class.java)
    }

    private var next: String? = ""

    suspend fun getData() {
        do {
            val data = webservice.getData(getHeaders(), makeRequest(next))
            next = data.items?.result?.get(0)?.meta?.next
            val itemCount = data.items?.result?.get(0)?.items?.size
            
            if (next?.isEmpty() == true) {
                break
            }
            /*CoroutineScope(Dispatchers.IO).launch { 
                okHttpClient.connectionPool.evictAll() /// <-- THIS WILL PREVENT THE ERROR/TIMEOUT CRASH
            }*/
            delay(2000)
        } while (next != null && next?.isNotEmpty() == true)
    }

    private fun getHeaders(): Map<String, String> {
        val headers = mutableMapOf<String,String>()
        headers["Content-Type"] = "application/json"
        headers["Cookie"] = COOKIE
        headers["User-Agent"] = UA_STR
        return headers
    }

    private fun makeRequest(next: String?): MyRequest {
        return MyRequest(next = next, topics = listOf(Topic()))
    }

    private const val TAG = "NetworkModule"
    private const val BASE_URL = "https://<host>"
    private const val UA_STR = "..."
    private const val COOKIE = "..."
}

interface Webservice {
    @POST("... url ....")
    suspend fun getData(@HeaderMap headerMap: Map<String, String>, @Body body: MyRequest): MyResponse
}

class MyApplication: Application() {
    
    override fun onCreate() {
        super.onCreate()
        
        NetworkModule.initRetrofit()
        CoroutineScope(Dispatchers.IO).launch {
            NetworkModule.getData()
        }
    }
}

[swankjesse]

Yeah this looks completely reasonable. Any chance you can post a thread dump when it stalls? I’m wondering if it’s stalling in OkHttp or possibly in coroutines somewhere?

[yschimke]

+1 to a thread dump.

Also compare the working and non working case with an event listener printing all events including connections. https://square.github.io/okhttp/features/events/

[saravr]

Yeah this looks completely reasonable. Any chance you can post a thread dump when it stalls? I’m wondering if it’s stalling in OkHttp or possibly in coroutines somewhere?

@swankjesse attached the thread dump okhttp-thread-dump.txt

[saravr]

+1 to a thread dump.

Also compare the working and non working case with an event listener printing all events including connections. https://square.github.io/okhttp/features/events/

Here is the log for not-working case. okhttp-events.txt

[swankjesse]

Thread dump shows it's an issue with HTTP/2 flow control. It's blocking on this line:

           [email protected]() // Wait until we receive a WINDOW_UPDATE.

Somehow OkHttp and your HTTP/2 server don't agree on flow control things, because the server has not granted OkHttp permission to send more bytes.

If you do an HTTP/2 frame dump we should be able to assign blame to either OkHttp or your HTTP/2 server.

https://square.github.io/okhttp/contribute/debug_logging/#http2-frame-logging

[saravr]

@swankjesse attaching the frame dump okhttp.timeout.log

You can see the timeout happing after the log with timestamp 15:27:38.620 1950-2863

Will this help?

[swankjesse]

@saravr if you’ll forgive me for sitting on this for 2 months, I’ve got a PR out to add even more information to aid debugging. https://github.com/square/okhttp/pull/7325

I’ve also got a hypothesis for what’s happening...

A few streams (0x00000005, 0x00000013) are canceled by the client:

...
2022-05-04 15:27:19.341 1950-2971/com.myapp.debug W/System.err: ODL: [2022-05-04 15:27:19] >> 0x00000005     4 RST_STREAM
...
2022-05-04 15:27:48.650 1950-2857/com.myapp.debug W/System.err: ODL: [2022-05-04 15:27:48] >> 0x00000013     4 RST_STREAM

Later the server does a connection-wide window update:

2022-05-04 15:27:48.698 1950-2851/com.myapp.debug W/System.err: ODL: [2022-05-04 15:27:48] << 0x00000000     4 WINDOW_UPDATE

But is this window update big enough? In particular does it account for the received bytes of the canceled streams? The additional debugging in the PR should tell us.

[swankjesse]

Relevant section from the HTTP/2 spec

  Flow-controlled frames (i.e., DATA) received after sending
  RST_STREAM are counted toward the connection flow-control window.
  Even though these frames might be ignored, because they are sent
  before the sender receives the RST_STREAM, the sender will
  consider the frames to count against the flow-control window.

[swankjesse]

One other gotcha – if you’re canceling a stream but not closing the ResponseBody, you will have flow control errors. Make sure you’re closing the response body.

[yschimke]

@swankjesse Any chance this is fixed by https://github.com/square/okhttp/pull/7801

or likely needs a similar writer side change?

[swankjesse]

#7801 is the right fix.