Poco::HttpClientSession.receiveResponse() throws NoMessageException without any apparent reason

Question

I wrote an HTTP server in Java and a client in C++ with Poco. This is a part of the C++ client code:

URI uri("http://127.0.0.1:4444");
HTTPClientSession session(uri.getHost(), uri.getPort());

HTTPRequest req(HTTPRequest::HTTP_POST,
                "/pages/page",
                HTTPMessage::HTTP_1_1);

session.sendRequest(req);
HTTPResponse res;
std::istream &is = session.receiveResponse(res);

In the last line I get the following error:

terminate called after throwing an instance of 'Poco::Net::NoMessageException'
  what():  No message received

But I don't understand why. The connection was established successfully and the page requested exists. I tried the same code with known websites (like Wikipedia) and it works without any exception.

I also tried to make the exact same request with cURL (to my server) in command-line and it shows the response of the server, so the server seems fine.

This is the original response of the server in a string form:

"HTTP/1.1 200 OK\r\n" +
"Server: [server name]\r\n" +
"Content-Type: text/xml; charset=utf-8\r\n" +
"Content-Length:" + bodyBytes.length + "\r\n" +
"Resource: " + job.resId + "\r\n\r\n" + 
"<?xml version=\"1.0\" encoding=\"UTF-8\"?><JobRequest><InputRepresentation id=\"0\"/>    <effectsList><cvtColor><code> CV_RGB2GRAY </code></cvtColor><resize><scaleFactorX> 0.5 </scaleFactorX><scaleFactorY> 0.5 </scaleFactorY><interpolation> INTER_LINEAR </interpolation></resize><GaussianBlur><kSize> 3 </kSize><sigmaX> 2 </sigmaX><sigmaY> 2 </sigmaY><borderType> BORDER_REPLICATE </borderType></GaussianBlur></effectsList></JobRequest>"

I have written a simple HTTP server which respond with a fixed response for every request, to test what's wrong. this is the code:

public class Test {
    public static void main(String[] args) {    
        try {
            ServerSocket serverSocket = new ServerSocket(4449);
            Socket clientSocket = serverSocket.accept();

            String body = "ab";
            byte[] bodyBytes = body.getBytes("UTF-8");

            String headers = "HTTP/1.1 200 OK\r\n" + 
                             "Server: Foo\r\n" +
                             "Content-Type: text/plain\r\n" +
                             "Content-Length: " + bodyBytes.length + "\r\n\r\n";

            byte[] headerBytes = headers.getBytes("UTF-8");

            byte[] responseBytes = new byte[headerBytes.length + bodyBytes.length];

            /* Fill responseBytes with the header and body bytes */
            int i = 0;
            for (int j = 0; j < headerBytes.length; ++j) {
                responseBytes[i] = headerBytes[j];
                ++i;
            }
            for (int j = 0; j < bodyBytes.length; ++j) {
                responseBytes[i] = bodyBytes[j];
                ++i;
            }
            clientSocket.getOutputStream().write(responseBytes);

        } catch (IOException e) {}
    }
}

I get the same exception even with this server. So what's wrong here?

Answer 1

Based on experimentation, I've found that it's necessary to include a Content-Length header if you are making an empty POST request. I.e.,

req.add("Content-Length", "0");