android http request execution is slow randomly

Question

I'm using the below code to fetch some data from server: (it happens on button onclick)

@Override
protected ArrayList<Category> doInBackground(String... arg0) {
    ArrayList<Category> result = new ArrayList<Category>();
    JSONArray array = new JSONArray();
    BufferedReader in = null;
    try
    {
        HttpParams params = new BasicHttpParams();
        params.setParameter(CoreProtocolPNames.PROTOCOL_VERSION, HttpVersion.HTTP_1_1);
        HttpClient httpclient = new DefaultHttpClient(params);
        HttpGet request = new HttpGet();
        URI website = new URI(_URL);
        request.setURI(website);
        HttpResponse response = httpclient.execute(request);
        in = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(
                response.getEntity().getContent()));
        String data = in.readLine();
        array = new JSONArray(data);
        for(int i = 0;i < array.length();i++)
        {
            JSONObject object = array.getJSONObject(i);
            Category category = new Category(object.getInt("Id"), object.getString("Name"));
            result.add(category);
        }
    }
    catch(Throwable t)
    {
        Log.e("Error getting categories", t.getMessage());
    }
    return result;
}

the problem is that 8 out of 10 tries,it throws the following exception:

org.apache.http.conn.HttpHostConnectException: Connection to http://kiagallery.ir refused

and most of the times it takes a long time to fetch the data, but sometimes it's fast as a lightning bolt, the data is not big, here's the data that's supposed to be fetched at the moment:

[{"Id":44,"Name":"Collection 101"},{"Id":45,"Name":"local 01"}]

so my question is, how come sometimes it can fetch the data at reasonable speed and sometimes it throws an exception, could be the network speed? because my workplace got a terrible network, I also tried at home and the result was better but the exception occurred still once in a while

Additional Info: I used curl to fetch it and it was fast, paste the url in my browser and it was fast.

@userM1433372 I wouldn't call it a server problem since it's working fine in another situations. anyway I called my ISP and informed them of slow connection speed and they did some stuff and now it seems to be working fine as it's expected to... thanks for your replies anyway — arash moeen, Aug 05 '14 at 07:03

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Aug 05 '14 at 13:18

if you suspect the server-side , you can just remove the android stack from the equation and test directly in curl, using switches -V and 'time' to measure as much stuff as you want.

when you have investigated server directly and are no longer suspicious of server-side, you return to your android stack.

example POST on REST endpoint:

curl -X POST  -H "X-Parse-Application-Id: ovv"  -H "X-Parse-REST-API-Key: heoj"  -H "X-Parse-Session-Token: i9ds" -H "Content-Type: application/json" --data @media1.json https://api.parse.com/1/classes/MediaItem

Thanks for your reply, I already tested with curl and it was no problem that way, so I server-side was off the table, but another thing is that my workplace got a messed up wifi network, laptop is connected via cable so I assume that's the problem. I'll look into it tomorrow. but thanks anyway — arash moeen, Aug 05 '14 at 14:00

android http request execution is slow randomly

1 Answers1