Detecting browser closed in middle of a http request response cycle

Question

Scenario :

1. Web application connecting to a java servlet. (Using embedded jetty)
2. High latency request, example a report generation ( takes seconds)
3. User can close the browser in between the http request response cycle.

Problem :

How to detect browser closed in between the request and response cycle, at the server side ?

Though the problem can be solved by using another request from the UI, I was wondering whether we could get the information from the communication protocol itself ? As HTTP is using TCP/IP as the base protocol, shouldn't we be able to detect this as a connection closed from the connection initiator side.

I went through the servlet apis and also the api used for configuring jetty server but couldn't find anything closely related.

Also went through these stackoverflow questions

1. Java Servlet : How to detect browser closing?
2. How to detect browser close at server side in asp.net?

Any insights ?

Answer 1

You'll get an exception when you attempt to write to the servlet output stream / writer.