Configure Jersey Chunked Encoding when Using Multipart

Make sure to configure the Jersey chunked encoding size when using MIME multipart content.

There are a couple different modes of HTTP content transfer used by Jersey. If the length of the content is known up front then Jersey uses a fixed streaming mode for content transfer. An example of when the length is known is when the content comes from a file. If, however, the length is not known ahead of time then Jersey has two options. It can use a non-streaming mode or a chunked encoding mode. MIME multipart is a case when the length is not known up front and therefore transfer occurs in one of these two later modes.

The problem is that the default chosen by Jersey when MIME multipart is involved is to use non-streaming mode. The non-streaming mode copies data temporarily into a ByteArrayInputStream and for larger content this process creates a lot of temporary short-lived objects which places stress on the garbage collector. It also consumes lots of memory while the entire message is being buffered.

Luckily this behavior is configurable under Jersey. The solution is to configure the chunked encoding size so that Jersey will use chunked encoding instead of non-streaming mode whenever MIME multipart content is encountered. Here is a brief example of how this is done on the client:

ClientConfig config = new DefaultClientConfig();
config.getProperties().put(
    ClientConfig.PROPERTY_CHUNKED_ENCODING_SIZE, 32 * 1024);