How to properly read POST request body in a Handler?

Question

The code I'm using now:

    Pooled<ByteBuffer> pooledByteBuffer = exchange.getConnection().getBufferPool().allocate();
    ByteBuffer byteBuffer = pooledByteBuffer.getResource();

    int limit = byteBuffer.limit();

    byteBuffer.clear();

    exchange.getRequestChannel().read(byteBuffer);
    int pos = byteBuffer.position();
    byteBuffer.rewind();
    byte[] bytes = new byte[pos];
    byteBuffer.get(bytes);

    String requestBody = new String(bytes, Charset.forName("UTF-8") );

    byteBuffer.clear();
    pooledByteBuffer.free();

It seems to work OK but I'm not sure about the need to clear() ByteBuffer before returning it to the pool. I'm not even sure about using exchange.getConnection().getBufferPool().allocate();. There is not much about it in the documentation.

Answer 1

A simpler way to read the request body is to dispatch to a worker thread, which makes HttpExchange#getInputStream() available.

There are two ways of doing this: using a BlockingHandler or the dispatch pattern shown in the documentation. Here's an example of using the BlockingHandler:

new BlockingHandler(myHandler)

The BlockingHandler basically does the dispatch for you.