Regression? 0 Content Length data returned

[SunnyCarter]

Hello there,

I have written a small mashup that requests Google Contacts Data.
This mashup has been working for approx 6 weeks. I haven't tested it
for a while, but I tried yesterday and it intermittently no longer
works - the request for the Contacts Data returns 200 OK but with a
Content length of 0.

During the time since it was working, I have upgraded to Firefox
2.0.0.15 and Google have made some updates to the API (e.g. released
js client library I believe). I'm not sure if any of these are a
factor.

The failure is intermittent - sometimes I get data returned, and some
times I don't. It seems to work more often on IE, and fail more often
on Firefox. But I have seen it working and failing on both. I am
making a synchronous AJAX GET request for the data.

I am pretty sure that my code is OK, the TCP trace of a failure and
success is below - has anyone else had the same problem or know what
it could be??

Thanks

Sunny

FAILURE TRACE
=============

GET /m8/feeds/contacts/default/full?alt=json HTTP/1.1

user-agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-GB; rv:
1.8.1.15) Gecko/20080623 Firefox/2.0.0.15

accept: text/xml,application/xml,application/xhtml+xml,text/
html;q=0.9,text/plain;q=0.8,image/png,*/*;q=0.5

accept-language: en-gb,en;q=0.5

accept-encoding: gzip,deflate

accept-charset: ISO-8859-1,utf-8;q=0.7,*;q=0.7

Keep-Alive: 300

connection: keep-alive

content-type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded

authorization: AuthSub token="<my_auth_token_here_is_ok>""

referer: http://<my_server>/session/line/contacts.html

If-Modified-Since: Tue, 08 Jul 2008 08:54:44 GMT

Cache-Control: max-age=0

content-length: 0

Pragma: no-cache

Host: www.google.com



HTTP/1.1 200 OK

Content-Type: text/plain

Cache-Control: max-age=0, must-revalidate, private

GData-Version: 1.0

Last-Modified: Tue, 08 Jul 2008 08:57:42 GMT

Date: Tue, 08 Jul 2008 08:57:42 GMT

Content-Length: 0

Server: GFE/1.3




AND AN EXAMPLE OF THE SAME CODE WORKING
=======================================
GET /m8/feeds/contacts/default/full?alt=json HTTP/1.1

accept: */*

accept-language: en-gb

referer: http://<my_server>/session/line/contacts.html

authorization: AuthSub token="<token_ok_again>"

content-type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded

UA-CPU: x86

accept-encoding: gzip, deflate

user-agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 5.1; .NET
CLR 1.1.4322; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 3.0.04506.30; .NET CLR
3.0.04506.648)

connection: Keep-Alive

content-length: 0

Cache-Control: no-cache

Pragma: no-cache

Host: www.google.com



HTTP/1.1 200 OK

Content-Type: application/json; charset=UTF-8

Cache-Control: max-age=0, must-revalidate, private

GData-Version: 1.0

Last-Modified: Tue, 08 Jul 2008 09:15:46 GMT

Content-Encoding: gzip

Transfer-Encoding: chunked

Date: Tue, 08 Jul 2008 09:15:46 GMT

Server: GFE/1.3



a

..........

475

.Y.n.6...CI.[,..d.zin(Z.)..}.6.....6.)...A...P./M......<$.
2.9..s8.o...t!..8.%...b,.Bd........M.R'.ufU)4>......N...w..<FH...Yat../
k....8_-.Cw,+........m......rqv"..c.Z..9T\...Y.m..<....+..Y....,..
{..e...K..at..a.....7c......Ei#.........-.>..$..aB.
$..Q0....12...I..u.......B...KW[wh.
{......)."47..h`f0a...n.w...k..NB[.e!.[.
J..%......J...*.Q.`.O..A.t.4.n..........!g=...~.x.*.l..........,...4e.
9.j...b[p...u.ZA.PN^...H....?.............F....V..1.T-...`..u.
[......m...(.....].Q..{\(p]r+..7.....N.x....Al?..f..z/.0P.sP.<[..
6.z...h....`....l...O.....$..4.ak4P. zG..99.9...t[...=H...si.J!E.g.}..
(....0......cv...G:...Q..:.O&.+......m....
(#....P...nO>K.;.oq.....D@3IS..;..9GxK.(^3...Vx....Q
`Q...V....h.).
..'...5...B......]T7..."=.....)=j...!el.........Ww9..\.
..~..Ju...nW..........o.._.....l...=.I..Mu..sz..k%.
6...?...E.ai..F.Aq<x&.b..(.S.gh@
$.i.Fn..;k@....V.Wr.i.......A.a.i:..:..C...sOk:....nz....e.Ft.
0.....xg.vn[w,g..F...u....T.....A...)7l...
$f.. ..v.^(....f...#qr(......C..g..~....wcFwVz.<}+".vPd.k.,...`..
0..cO{.}...r........C....5_.K)..?."..Y.6.<Z..oy..
9W.x.....R......N.J....=.%.......".?\.o.,..4..5."|..Y..GP..._.!
(.c...W......~C..z...

0

[Trevor Johns]

Hello,
I'm not able to reproduce this on my end. Could you provide some
additional information:

- How frequently does the failure occur?
- What OS are you running?
- Do you have any firewall software or equipment that might be interfering?
- Are you experiencing this on other computers?
- Could you try the Contacts API contact picker sample and let me know
if you experience similar problems?
http://gdata-javascript-client.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/samples/contacts/contacts_picker/picker.html

--
Trevor Johns

[SunnyCarter]

Thanks for your response and sorry for not getting back myself sooner.

I have tested again - the failure is now only seldomly occurring (5
times in 30 attempts). I think it occurs in the following
circumstances :
1) request auth token
2) do not use this auth token
3) request another auth token
4) call the contacts data api with the first auth token (or it might
be the second, I'm not sure as I don't have a trace of the whole thing
yet)

- I am running Windows XP SP3 Professional
- I have checked with our network guys and they are sure that no
network stuff is interfering at our end
- Ive experienced this on the 3 different computers I've tried
- The contact picker sample worked fine on the 5 attempts I made, both
on IE and Firefox.

Currently I am trying to work around the problem in my code where I
might accidentally not use a token after requesting it, hopefully this
should workaround the problem.

Thanks

Sunny