This article will show an example on how you can configure the HTTP clients the Middleware uses to make requests to third parties.

Overview

Starting with version 7.10.4 of the Open Xchange Server it is possible to configure individual timeouts, etc. for HTTP clients used by the Middleware for request to third parties. This can either be done by setting general properties for all HTTP clients or by setting properties for each client. The follwing chapter will guide you through the configuration.

Configuration

To guarantee backwards compatibility with older versions, different levels of configuration were introduced. The first level is introduced with this feature

Level 1 - General configuration

To be able to configure all HTTP clients without a specific namespace, general properties were introduced. Those general properties will begin with com.openexchange.httpclient and can be extended with the property to set. Following list covers all properties that can be set, with their default values:

com.openexchange.httpclient.readTimeout=30000
com.openexchange.httpclient.connectTimeout=30000
com.openexchange.httpclient.requestTimeout=30000
com.openexchange.httpclient.keepAlive.duration=20
com.openexchange.httpclient.keepAlive.monitorInterval=5
com.openexchange.httpclient.totalConnections=20
com.openexchange.httpclient.connectionPerRoute=10
com.openexchange.httpclient.socketBufferSize=8192

Properties defined with this manner will be applied to all HTTP clients configuration.

Note: For draw backs read on.

Level 2 - Legacy properties

Previous versions of the Open Xchange Server had problematically defaults for HTTP clients. These defaults will still be applied on top of the default configuration, efficiently overwrite the defaults set with com.openexchange.httpclient.*. This will avoid that HTTP clients will change their behavior when updating from a version 7.10.3 or earlier. To make those problematically defaults visible, they got documented here

Further previous version of the Open Xchange Server have already properties configuring HTTP clients. Just to given an example, the configuration for the iCAL feed feature can be found here. These properties will stay untouched and will overwrite the defaults set with com.openexchange.httpclient.*, like described above, too.

Level 3 - Client specific configuration

To be able to configure special clients, it possible to add a client identifier to com.openexchange.httpclient.*. Frankly speaking, it is possible to configure clients with e.g. com.openexchange.httpclient.icalfeed.*, overwriting the default configuration. This specialized configuration always "wins". It will be applied on top of all other configuration. The list of all available client identifier can be found below.

HTTP client identifier

Following clients can be configured:

Wildcard identifier

Additionally to the specific HTTP client identifier above the server is capable to configure HTTP clients for groups of clients. Following clients fall into this category:

The difference to the specific identifier is that you can either A) configure the complete group of HTTP clients by removing the wildcard from the identifier or B) specify configuration for each client of the group explicit. For an example see below.

Examples

Example 1: Adjust the common configuration

To adjust configuration for all clients, expect with the draw backs from above, it is only required to set

com.openexchange.httpclient.readTimeout=30000
com.openexchange.httpclient.connectTimeout=30000
com.openexchange.httpclient.requestTimeout=30000
com.openexchange.httpclient.keepAlive.duration=20
com.openexchange.httpclient.keepAlive.monitorInterval=5
com.openexchange.httpclient.totalConnections=20
com.openexchange.httpclient.connectionPerRoute=10
com.openexchange.httpclient.socketBufferSize=8192

Example 2: Adjust configuration for iCAL feeds

To adjust configuration for example the HTTP client for iCAL feeds on top of the general configuration, use the identifier icalfeed to enhance the configuration to your needs.

Note: The following example still uses the default values for the iCAL feed HTTP client.

com.openexchange.httpclient.readTimeout=30000
com.openexchange.httpclient.connectTimeout=30000
com.openexchange.httpclient.requestTimeout=30000
com.openexchange.httpclient.keepAlive.duration=20
com.openexchange.httpclient.keepAlive.monitorInterval=5
com.openexchange.httpclient.totalConnections=20
com.openexchange.httpclient.connectionPerRoute=10
com.openexchange.httpclient.socketBufferSize=8192

com.openexchange.httpclient.icalfeed.readTimeout=30000
com.openexchange.httpclient.icalfeed.connectTimeout=30000
com.openexchange.httpclient.icalfeed.requestTimeout=30000
com.openexchange.httpclient.icalfeed.keepAlive.duration=20
com.openexchange.httpclient.icalfeed.keepAlive.monitorInterval=5
com.openexchange.httpclient.icalfeed.totalConnections=20
com.openexchange.httpclient.icalfeed.connectionPerRoute=10
com.openexchange.httpclient.icalfeed.socketBufferSize=8192

Example 3: Adjust configuration for iCAL feeds with legacy properties set

In addition to these configurations, some features already had possibilities to adjust HTTP client configuration, just like the iCAL feed feature from above. In such a case the legacy properties will still be used, if not configured otherwise with the new properties.

# Legacy configuration in calendar.properties file
com.openexchange.calendar.ical.maxConnections=10
com.openexchange.calendar.ical.maxConnectionsPerRoute=5
com.openexchange.calendar.ical.connectTimeout=50000
com.openexchange.calendar.ical.socketReadTimeout=50000

# New configuration for iCAL feeds
com.openexchange.httpclient.icalfeed.readTimeout=30000
com.openexchange.httpclient.icalfeed.requestTimeout=30000
com.openexchange.httpclient.icalfeed.keepAlive.duration=20
com.openexchange.httpclient.icalfeed.keepAlive.monitorInterval=5
com.openexchange.httpclient.icalfeed.totalConnections=20
com.openexchange.httpclient.icalfeed.socketBufferSize=8192

As you may have already noticed, com.openexchange.httpclient.icalfeed.connectTimeout and com.openexchange.httpclient.icalfeed.connectionPerRoute have not been set. Instead of falling back to the default values, the values from com.openexchange.calendar.ical.connectTimeout and com.openexchange.calendar.ical.maxConnectionsPerRoute will be used for the client configuration. Further the values for the legacy properties com.openexchange.calendar.ical.maxConnections and com.openexchange.calendar.ical.socketReadTimeout will be overwritten by the new properties com.openexchange.httpclient.icalfeed.totalConnections and com.openexchange.httpclient.icalfeed.readTimeout.

Efficiently the configuration from above can be written like this

com.openexchange.httpclient.icalfeed.readTimeout=30000
com.openexchange.httpclient.icalfeed.connectTimeout=50000
com.openexchange.httpclient.icalfeed.requestTimeout=30000
com.openexchange.httpclient.icalfeed.keepAlive.duration=20
com.openexchange.httpclient.icalfeed.keepAlive.monitorInterval=5
com.openexchange.httpclient.icalfeed.totalConnections=20
com.openexchange.httpclient.icalfeed.connectionPerRoute=5
com.openexchange.httpclient.icalfeed.socketBufferSize=8192

It is not recommended to use this mixed configuration setup.

Example 4: Wildcard configuration

As mentioned above it is also possible to configure complete groups of HTTP clients. For SProxyD this can looks like this

com.openexchange.httpclient.sproxyd.totalConnections=50
com.openexchange.httpclient.sproxyd.connectionPerRoute=10

With this configuration all HTTP clients that are generated to communicate to SProxyD will have a maximum of 50 connections with a maximum of 10 connections per route. Let's say you noticed for the filestore with the ID 5 that request need more time to be successfully answered. Therefore you want to increase the request timeout. This can be done like followed:

com.openexchange.httpclient.sproxyd-5.requestTimeout=100000

Please note that the configuration for the basic HTTP clients will still be applied. Therefore the maximum connections and the connections per route are also increased for the HTTP client communicating with the filestore 5.

Legacy properties

Following features did already provide a possibility to configure HTTP clients. These legacy properties will be preferred over common properties starting with com.openexchange.httpclient.*

Further notes

Please note that the client will only have the in- or decreased resources if the server is restarted or the configuration has been reloaded. In case of a reload, the HTTP clients will be renewed. This might cause for a short time an increased memory demand.

Please also note, that if no values are set, programmatically default will be used. In case legacy properties are set, those are still preferred.