Default chunk length of Android HttpURLConnection.setChunkedStreamingMode()?

Question

In the documentation of HttpURLConnection.setChunkedStreamingMode(), it said if I specify 0 in the parameter, it will use default chunk length, such as:

conn.setChunkedStreamingMode(0);

What is the exact value of the default chunk length? and what is the unit of the parameter? in bytes?

Answer 1

Your question made me curious so I tested some stuff.

What is the exact value of the default chunk length?

I found here that chunkLength is a protected variable of the HttpURLConnection class, meaning it's only accessible inside the class itself or in a subclass. So I made a subclass of HttpURLConnection and tried to print out the chunkLength

class HttpTest extends HttpURLConnection {

    protected HttpTest(URL url) {
        super(url);
        Log.d("CHUNKLENGTH", String.format("%d", this.chunkLength));
        this.setChunkedStreamingMode(0);
        Log.d("CHUNKLENGTH", String.format("%d", this.chunkLength));
    }

    @Override
    public void disconnect() {
        // TODO Auto-generated method stub
    }

    @Override
    public boolean usingProxy() {
        // TODO Auto-generated method stub
        return false;
    }

    @Override
    public void connect() throws IOException {
        // TODO Auto-generated method stub

    }
}

Calling it like this

try {
    HttpTest test = new HttpTest(new URL("http://www.google.com/"));
} catch (MalformedURLException e) {
    // TODO Auto-generated catch block
    e.printStackTrace();
}

These were the results

From that, we can conclude that the default value it uses is 1024

---

what is the unit of the parameter?

At the link you posted, it is mentioned that

A small chunk length increases the number of bytes that must be transmitted because of the header on every chunk.

I think it's safe to assume you have to give the number of bytes. The default 1024 also fits that criteria