I've been using isEntityAvailable() as a guard for null
representations and ran into a snag with HEAD requests. The server is
returning the Content-Length and Last-Modified header on the HEAD
request and the client's Response instance gets an
EmptyRepresentation. By default, isAvailable() on EmptyRepresentation
returns false and so isEntityAvailable on Request returns false.
The result is that instead of doing:
if (response.isEntityAvailable()) {
Representation entity = response.getEntity();
...
}
I now have to do:
Representation entity = response.getEntity();
if (entity!=null) {
...
}
For other requests where the entity body is returned, the first case
works and is more readable (at least, to me).
After reading the API documentation again, I'm questioning the value
of using isEntityAvailable() as the Represenation instance could cause
undesirable error states when isAvailable() returns false for some
reason.
What is the intended use isEntityAvailable() considering empty
entities and requests like HEAD versus those that just might be
"slow"?
--Alex Milowski
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