Netty Read Channel Only When I Want To

Main.java

  public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
    EventLoopGroup elg = new NioEventLoopGroup();
    Bootstrap b = new Bootstrap()
        .group(elg)
        .channel(NioSocketChannel.class)
        .option(ChannelOption.SO_KEEPALIVE, true)
        .handler(new ChannelInitializer<SocketChannel>() {
          @Override
          protected void initChannel(SocketChannel ch) throws Exception {
            ch.config().setAutoRead(false);
            ch.pipeline()
                .addLast("framer", new FixedLengthFrameDecoder(100))
                .addLast("decoder", new StringDecoder())
                .addLast("encoder", new StringEncoder())
                .addLast("handler", new ClientHandler());
          }
        });


    ChannelFuture f = b.connect(HOST, PORT);
    f.addListener(new ChannelFutureListener() {
      @Override
      public void operationComplete(ChannelFuture future) throws Exception {
        if (future.isSuccess()) {
          final Channel ch = f.channel();
          ByteBuf buf = ch.alloc().buffer()
              .writeBytes(Unpooled.copiedBuffer(String.format("GET %s HTTP/1.1\nHost: %s\r\n\n", PATH, HOST),
                  Charset.defaultCharset()));
          ChannelFuture w = ch.writeAndFlush(buf);
          w.addListener(w1 -> {
            if (w.isSuccess()) {
              ch.read();
            }
          });
        }
      }
    });

    new CountDownLatch(1).await();
  }

You can ignore the "GET %s HTTP/1.1\nHost: %s\r\n\n" line... This is just for testing streaming (web servers are handy :-))