Does the Jersey client close the connection on exception?

Question

I've read the Jersey documentation, and it says Jersey automatically closes a connection after an entity is read (e.g. response.readEntity(SomeObject.class))

But when an exception is thrown, either a bad request or a socket timeout, does Jersey automatically close the connection, or should I have a finally clause that calls client.close()?

Answer 1

No. Neither does Jersey call client.close() in case of an exception nor does the JerseyClient implement AutoCloseable.

You can easily test this. A client throws a IllegalStateException if you invoke a method after closing:

Client client = ClientBuilder.newClient();
client.close();
client.target("http://stackoverflow.com").request().get(); // IllegalStateException

But you can invoke a method after catching an exception:

Client client = ClientBuilder.newClient();
try {
    client.target("http://foo.bar").request().get(); // java.net.ConnectException: Operation timed out
} catch (Exception ex) {
    client.target("http://stackoverflow.com").request().get(); // works
}

So closing is your job.

Update: JAX-RS 2.1 will use AutoClosables.