URLConnection timing out before response is received - setReadTimeout does nothing

[Mike Hul]

I'm using a socket connection to send a POST request. Here's some code:

    
HttpURLConnection conn = (HttpURLConnection)url.openConnection();
			
//URLConnection conn = url.openConnection();
	        
conn.setDoOutput(true);
conn.setDoInput(true);
conn.setRequestProperty("Content-Type", "text/xml; charset=\"utf-8\"");
conn.setRequestProperty("Method", "POST");
//conn.setReadTimeout(30000);

OutputStreamWriter wr = new OutputStreamWriter(conn.getOutputStream());
	        
wr.write(xmlbody);
wr.flush();
	    
int hold = conn.getReadTimeout();
	        
// Get the response
BufferedReader rd = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(conn.getInputStream()));

This works fine for requests where the response is relatively small. But for larger responses, the last step here often times out and throws an IOException. Setting the ReadTimeout property appears to do nothing, the connection just ignores it. Is there any way to set the timeout to a larger number WITHOUT resorting to using Apache HttpClient (or Sun's HttpClient for that matter since I'm working in the Google Web Toolkit environment and for some reason it doesn't allow you to use it).

Any help is appreciated. Thanks in advance.