I am writing Java2Script’s Google Talk, and it uses a mode of continuation (also known as “Comet” application). In order to implement continuum data transfer between browser and server ( Tomcat in the backend ), I kept the HTTP connection blocked waiting for data to be available. In the middle, Apache httpd server is used and mod_jk is used to connect the two server.
But I met a ridiculous problem between servlet container and http server. When the browser is assigned to connect servlet directly, it can obtain data from the connection, but it can not obtain a bit when it is piped through Apache httpd server.
I tried to add “Transfer-Encoding: chunked” or “Content-length: 0” but with no helps. And I modified jk.conf with “JkOptions +FlushPackets”, still with no helps. Finally, I remove a line of “writer.flush();” from my servlet source, and things all went correctly.
The line of “writer.flush();” was located in the the line when there is no data written to the response. And I considered that when there are no data in the response, calling flush method will hang mod_jk connector up. And the whole later data transfer will be disturbed.
More details about mod_jk, I recommend you to read “Tunning apache and tomcat for web 2.0 comet application“.
Update:
Finally I found out that “JkOptions +FlushPackets” works for me. #flush method problem is a fake problem. Only after I restart both Tomcat and Apache server do “JkOptions +FlushPackets” begin to work.