Download Large file from server using REST template Java Spring MVC

I have a REST service which sends me a large ISO file ,there are no issues in the REST service . Now I have written a Web application which calls the rest service to get the file ,on the client(web app) side I receive a Out Of memory Exception.Below is my code

HttpHeaders headers = new HttpHeaders();//1 Line

    headers.setAccept(Arrays.asList(MediaType.APPLICATION_OCTET_STREAM));//2 Line
    headers.set("Content-Type","application/json");//3 Line
    headers.set("Cookie", "session=abc");//4 Line
    HttpEntity statusEntity=new HttpEntity(headers);//5 Line
    String uri_status=new String("http://"+ip+":8080/pcap/file?fileName={name}");//6 Line

    ResponseEntity<byte[]>resp_status=rt.exchange(uri_status, HttpMethod.GET, statusEntity, byte[].class,"File5.iso");//7 Line

I receive out of memory exception at 7 line ,I guess i will have to buffer and get in parts ,but dont know how can i get this file from the server ,the size of the file is around 500 to 700 MB . Can anyone please assist .

Exception Stack:

  org.springframework.web.util.NestedServletException: Handler processing failed; nested exception is java.lang.OutOfMemoryError: Java heap space
    org.springframework.web.servlet.DispatcherServlet.doDispatch(DispatcherServlet.java:972)
    org.springframework.web.servlet.DispatcherServlet.doService(DispatcherServlet.java:852)
    org.springframework.web.servlet.FrameworkServlet.processRequest(FrameworkServlet.java:882)
    org.springframework.web.servlet.FrameworkServlet.doGet(FrameworkServlet.java:778)
    javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet.service(HttpServlet.java:622)
    javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet.service(HttpServlet.java:729)
    org.apache.tomcat.websocket.server.WsFilter.doFilter(WsFilter.java:52)
root cause

java.lang.OutOfMemoryError: Java heap space
    java.util.Arrays.copyOf(Arrays.java:3236)
    java.io.ByteArrayOutputStream.grow(ByteArrayOutputStream.java:118)
    java.io.ByteArrayOutputStream.ensureCapacity(ByteArrayOutputStream.java:93)
    java.io.ByteArrayOutputStream.write(ByteArrayOutputStream.java:153)
    org.springframework.util.FileCopyUtils.copy(FileCopyUtils.java:113)
    org.springframework.util.FileCopyUtils.copyToByteArray(FileCopyUtils.java:164)
    org.springframework.http.converter.ByteArrayHttpMessageConverter.readInternal(ByteArrayHttpMessageConverter.java:58)
    org.springframework.http.converter.ByteArrayHttpMessageConverter.readInternal(ByteArrayHttpMessageConverter.java:1)
    org.springframework.http.converter.AbstractHttpMessageConverter.read(AbstractHttpMessageConverter.java:153)
    org.springframework.web.client.HttpMessageConverterExtractor.extractData(HttpMessageConverterExtractor.java:81)
    org.springframework.web.client.RestTemplate$ResponseEntityResponseExtractor.extractData(RestTemplate.java:627)
    org.springframework.web.client.RestTemplate$ResponseEntityResponseExtractor.extractData(RestTemplate.java:1)
    org.springframework.web.client.RestTemplate.doExecute(RestTemplate.java:454)
    org.springframework.web.client.RestTemplate.execute(RestTemplate.java:409)
    org.springframework.web.client.RestTemplate.exchange(RestTemplate.java:385)
    com.pcap.webapp.HomeController.getPcapFile(HomeController.java:186)

My Server Side REST Service Code which is working fine is

@RequestMapping(value = URIConstansts.GET_FILE, produces = { MediaType.APPLICATION_OCTET_STREAM_VALUE}, method = RequestMethod.GET)
public void getFile(@RequestParam(value="fileName", required=false) String fileName,HttpServletRequest request,HttpServletResponse response) throws IOException{



    byte[] reportBytes = null;
    File result=new File("/home/arpit/Documents/PCAP/dummyPath/"+fileName);

    if(result.exists()){
        InputStream inputStream = new FileInputStream("/home/arpit/Documents/PCAP/dummyPath/"+fileName); 
        String type=result.toURL().openConnection().guessContentTypeFromName(fileName);
        response.setHeader("Content-Disposition", "attachment; filename=" + fileName);
        response.setHeader("Content-Type",type);

        reportBytes=new byte[100];//New change
        OutputStream os=response.getOutputStream();//New change
        int read=0;
        while((read=inputStream.read(reportBytes))!=-1){
            os.write(reportBytes,0,read);
        }
        os.flush();
        os.close();






    }

Here is how I do it. Based on hints from this Spring Jira issue.

RestTemplate restTemplate // = ...;

// Optional Accept header
RequestCallback requestCallback = request -> request.getHeaders()
        .setAccept(Arrays.asList(MediaType.APPLICATION_OCTET_STREAM, MediaType.ALL));

// Streams the response instead of loading it all in memory
ResponseExtractor<Void> responseExtractor = response -> {
    // Here I write the response to a file but do what you like
    Path path = Paths.get("some/path");
    Files.copy(response.getBody(), path);
    return null;
};
restTemplate.execute(URI.create("www.something.com"), HttpMethod.GET, requestCallback, responseExtractor);

From the aforementioned Jira issue:

Note that you cannot simply return the InputStream from the extractor, because by the time the execute method returns, the underlying connection and stream are already closed.

Update for Spring 5

Spring 5 introduced the WebClient class which allows asynchronous (e.g. non-blocking) http requests. From the doc:

By comparison to the RestTemplate, the WebClient is:

• non-blocking, reactive, and supports higher concurrency with less hardware resources.
• provides a functional API that takes advantage of Java 8 lambdas.
• supports both synchronous and asynchronous scenarios.
• supports streaming up or down from a server.

To get WebClient in Spring Boot, you need this dependency:

<dependency>
    <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
    <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-webflux</artifactId>
</dependency>

For the moment, I'm sticking with RestTemplate because I don't want to pull in another dependency only to get access to WebClient.

As @bernie mentioned you can use WebClient to achieve this:

public Flux<DataBuffer> downloadFileUrl( ) throws IOException {

    WebClient webClient = WebClient.create();

    // Request service to get file data
    return Flux<DataBuffer> fileDataStream = webClient.get()
            .uri( this.fileUrl )
            .accept( MediaType.APPLICATION_OCTET_STREAM )
            .retrieve()
            .bodyToFlux( DataBuffer.class );
}

@GetMapping( produces = MediaType.APPLICATION_OCTET_STREAM_VALUE )
public void downloadFile( HttpServletResponse response ) throws IOException
{
    Flux<DataBuffer> dataStream = this.downloadFileUrl( );

    // Streams the stream from response instead of loading it all in memory
    DataBufferUtils.write( dataStream, response.getOutputStream() )
            .map( DataBufferUtils::release )
            .blockLast();
}

You can still use WebClient even if you don't have Reactive Server stack - Rossen Stoyanchev (a member of Spring Framework team) explains it quite well in the Guide to "Reactive" for Spring MVC Developers presentation. During this presentation, Rossen Stoyanchev mentioned that they thought about deprecating RestTemplate, but they have decided to postpone it after all, but it may still happen in the future!

The main disadvantage of using WebClient so far it's a quite steep learning curve (reactive programming), but I think there is no way to avoid in the future, so better to take a look on it sooner than latter.