Netty - Sending POST requests

Question

Here's my situation:

1. Client sends a POST request to Netty Server.
2. Netty processes the POST request and If the server determines that a response needs to be sent It sends a response back to the client. Else The server has to send a POST request to another end point, get the response and send that response back to the client.

So far I have got the incoming POST request working. To send the outgoing POST request this is what I'm doing in my Handler.

private void sendHttpPost(String input, ChannelHandlerContext ctx) {
        try {
            String url = "http://localhost";
            URI uri = new URI(url);
            Bootstrap b = new Bootstrap();
            b.group(new NioEventLoopGroup())
            .channel(NioServerSocketChannel.class)
            .handler(new PostRequestHandler())
            .option(ChannelOption.AUTO_READ, false);
           Channel f = b.connect("REMOTE_HOST", 8888).sync().channel();       
           HttpRequest postReq = new DefaultHttpRequest(HttpVersion.HTTP_1_1, 
                                        HttpMethod.POST, uri.getRawPath());
           postReq.headers().set(HttpHeaders.Names.HOST, "localhost");
           postReq.headers().set(HttpHeaders.Names.CONNECTION, HttpHeaders.Values.CLOSE);
           postReq.headers().set(HttpHeaders.Names.CONTENT_TYPE,"application/x-www-form-urlencoded");
           f.writeAndFlush(postReq);

           // Wait for the server to close the connection.
           f.closeFuture().sync();
        } catch (Exception e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        }           
    }

This is obviously wrong because I'm starting a new Bootstrap process within the handler. However, I can't send a HttpRequest without a channel. I can't reuse the existing Channel in the ChannelHandlerContext.

What's the correct way to do this ? How can I fork a new HttpPostRequest. Any help will be greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

Use .channel(NioSocketChannel.class) instead of .channel(NioServerSocketChannel.class) in your client bootstrap code. That's it.