Saxon

Saxon relies entirely on the Java runtime for access to remote resources over HTTP (for example, when executing the doc() function, or when fetching stylesheet modules via xsl:include/xsl:import). In fact in most cases (when we're retrieving XML resources) we don't even fetch them ourselves, we leave this to the XML parser to do, so the detailed behaviour may depend on which XML parser you are using. Your stack trace shows a case where Apache Xerces is creating the HTTP connection.

This isn't the case for other media types, e.g. with unparsed-text() we fetch the document ourselves; but we use the simplest of calls, e.g.

URLConnection connection = absoluteURL.openConnection();
inputStream = connection.getInputStream();

You can intervene in this process at a number of levels.

• There are Java system properties you can set to influence HTTP client behaviour, though I have never become familiar with them.

• When the XML parser is fetching the resource, you can write an EntityResolver to take over the job of getting the input stream

• When Saxon is fetching the resource, you can write a URIResolver or UnparsedTextResolver to take over the job of getting the input stream

The system default's a great idea, did not know about that. Thanks!

Hey there, one more question on this: I noticed that, after setting the global timeout, a doc() call that hits this timeout will result in an IOException, which in the Sender class is thrown as an XPathException with the problem URI. But for an unparsed-text call, the StandardUnparsedTextResolver will catch the IOException and throw XPathException without including in its message the URI that failed to respond. Is there any reason for that? I know we can write our own unparsed text resolver but it'd be nice if this info was included for users to see like it is in the doc() call.

Thanks for pointing it out, I have made some improvements to the error messages for the next release.

Note that you can call setDebugging(true) on the StandardUnparsedTextResolver, in which case Logger.info() and Logger.error() messages are sent to the Logger registered with the Configuration. By default these are output to System.err.