When to consume Closeable HttpResponse?

Question

I have a question regarding to CloseableHttpResponse

supposing I have a response like

response= httpclient.execute(....)

I saw from the official doc , I should call Entity.consume(response.entity)

But, from my use case，it seems nothing wrong if I do not call Entity.consume(response.entity)

Supposing my use case is

1. not websoket, that means no streaming continuing comes in.
2. single thread

So, in this case, do I still need to call Entity.consume(response.entity) ?

Answer 1

If you are not using a streaming API and you are sure that you have read the entire response content from the HttpEntity object returned by HttpResponse.getEntity(), then it may seem that there is no harm in not calling EntityUtils.consume(entity).

However, it is still good practice to call EntityUtils.consume(entity) because it helps to release the connection associated with the response and free up system resources. If you don't call EntityUtils.consume(entity), the connection may be kept open until it times out, which can cause performance problems in your application, especially if you make a lot of HTTP requests.

Additionally, not consuming the entity may cause problems if you reuse the connection manager or connection pool for subsequent requests, because the connection may still be held open by the previous request. This can cause connection timeouts, connection pool exhaustion, or other issues.

Therefore, even if your use case doesn't strictly require you to consume the response entity, it's still a good practice to do so to ensure that your application is using system resources efficiently and avoiding potential issues.