Trouble with Netty IdleStateHandler - am I testing it the wrong way?

Question

I have a toy Netty server and am trying to send heartbeat messages to clients when nothing has happened on their channels. I am testing this by telnetting to the server, writing a message and then not sending anything, but I get no hearbeat!

Console:

>>telnet localhost 6969
Trying 127.0.0.1...
Connected to localhost.
Escape character is '^]'.
>>foo
Did you say 'foo'?

MyPipelineFactory.java

public class MyPipelineFactory implements ChannelPipelineFactory {
    private final Timer timer;
    private static final ChannelHandler stringDecoder = new StringDecoder();
    private static final ChannelHandler stringEncoder = new StringEncoder();
    private final ChannelHandler idleStateHandler;

    public MyPipelineFactory(Timer t) {
        this.timer = t;
        this.idleStateHandler = new IdleStateHandler(timer, 5, 5, 5);
    }

    public ChannelPipeline getPipeline() {
        // create default pipeline from static method
        ChannelPipeline pipeline = Channels.pipeline();
        pipeline.addLast("idleStateHandler", this.idleStateHandler); // heartbeat
        pipeline.addLast("framer", new DelimiterBasedFrameDecoder(1024, Delimiters.lineDelimiter()));
        //pipeline.addLast("frameDecoder", new LengthFieldBasedFrameDecoder(1024,0,1)); // get header from message
        pipeline.addLast("stringDecoder", stringDecoder);
        pipeline.addLast("stringEncoder", stringEncoder);
        pipeline.addLast("ServerHandler", new ServerHandler()); // goes at the end

        return pipeline;
    }
}

HeartbeatHandler.java

public class HeartbeatHandler extends IdleStateAwareChannelHandler {

    @Override
    public void channelIdle(ChannelHandlerContext ctx, IdleStateEvent e) {
        if (e.getState() == IdleState.READER_IDLE) {
            System.out.println("Reader idle, closing channel");
            //e.getChannel().close();
            e.getChannel().write("heartbeat-reader_idle");
        }
        else if (e.getState() == IdleState.WRITER_IDLE) {
            System.out.println("Writer idle, sending heartbeat");
            e.getChannel().write("heartbeat-writer_idle");
        }
        else if (e.getState() == IdleState.ALL_IDLE) {
            System.out.println("All idle, sending heartbeat");
            e.getChannel().write("heartbeat-all_idle");
        }
    }
}

---

Fixed:

I forgot to have the HeartbeatHandler, which requires the IdleStateHandler (this part wasn't obvious to me). That works.

public class MyPipelineFactory implements ChannelPipelineFactory {
    private final Timer timer;
    private static final ChannelHandler stringDecoder = new StringDecoder();
    private static final ChannelHandler stringEncoder = new StringEncoder();
    private final ChannelHandler idleStateHandler;
    private final ChannelHandler heartbeatHandler;

    public MyPipelineFactory(Timer t) {
        this.timer = t;
        this.idleStateHandler = new IdleStateHandler(timer, 5, 5, 5);
        this.heartbeatHandler = new HeartbeatHandler();
    }

    public ChannelPipeline getPipeline() {
        // create default pipeline from static method
        ChannelPipeline pipeline = Channels.pipeline();
        pipeline.addLast("idleStateHandler", this.idleStateHandler);
        pipeline.addLast("heartbeatHandler", this.heartbeatHandler); // heartbeat
        pipeline.addLast("framer", new DelimiterBasedFrameDecoder(1024, Delimiters.lineDelimiter()));
        //pipeline.addLast("frameDecoder", new LengthFieldBasedFrameDecoder(1024,0,1)); // get header from message
        pipeline.addLast("stringDecoder", stringDecoder);
        pipeline.addLast("stringEncoder", stringEncoder);
        pipeline.addLast("ServerHandler", new ServerHandler()); // goes at the end

        return pipeline;
    }
}

Glamorize

Answer 1

You missed to add the HeartbeatHandler in the ChannelPipeline. You need to add IdleStateHandler AND HeartbeatHandler to the ChannelPipeline to have it work.

Agnosia

ah, that wasn't clear from the docs that I need both.thanks again – Glamorize

could it be that HeartbeatHandler is no longer needed in 3.5.9? – Thaler

Does the client need to respond to the heartbeat messages manually parsing the response ? or it is handled by netty ? – Hectograph

Answer 2

Norman’s answer is a really helpful,but what I'd like to point out another thing: the idleStateHandler and the heartbeatHandler should be channel specific, so in the PipeLineFactory , you shouldn't construct these two handlers as private members, but need to create new ones in the getPipeline() method. You's also have a channel map to save the constructed channels, if you need to release them, you'd better also stop the timer to release the resources.

Nightshade

since IdleStateHandler is shareable I don't think that you need to make a new instance for every pipeline. – Junkie

IdleStateHandler is NOT sharable in Netty 4.x. – Agnosia