thingspeak - Any way to disable "Transfer-Encoding: chunked"?

When updating a channel with an execute Talkback(https://www.mathworks.com/help/thingspeak/writedataandexecutetalkbackcommand.html), the thingspeak server uses a chunked style body. With weak and intermittent cellular connections, this can cause difficulties. Is there any way to disable this behavior? I believe updating a channel without Talkback does not use chunked encoding.

Answer 1

[Christopher Stapels]

Are you sending a very large command to your device? The talkback response should be quite small. We cannot change the encoding on the response that is sent from a TalkBack, but you can use a ThingSpeak channel as a proxy for TalkBack. Write the command to a channel and have the device read the channel at regular intervals or use MQTT to subscribe to the channel. The subscription will provide the channel contents when they are updated.

[Zachariah Belding]

Thank you for your help. Yes, the talkback is quite small. Just a short command. Here is an example of the response from the server when everything works fine:

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Sat, 09 Jan 2021 02:45:11 GMT
Content-Type: application/json; charset=utf-8
Transfer-Encoding: chunked
Connection: keep-alive
Status: 200 OK
X-Frame-Options: SAMEORIGIN
Access-Control-Allow-Origin: *
Access-Control-Allow-Methods: GET, POST, PUT, OPTIONS, DELETE, PATCH
Access-Control-Allow-Headers: origin, content-type, X-Requested-With
Access-Control-Max-Age: 1800
ETag: W/"51f2a616a1d535be278670432ed2af33"
Cache-Control: max-age=0, private, must-revalidate
X-Request-Id: f4358076-c083-4650-93a4-2fb48a7e1e0b
X-Runtime: 0.081324
X-Powered-By: Phusion Passenger 4.0.57
Server: nginx/1.9.3 + Phusion Passenger 4.0.57

86
{"executed_at":"2021-01-09T02:45:11Z","position":null,"id":21346313,"command_string":"146wateron","created_at":"2021-01-09T02:44:35Z"}
0

When I run into trouble is when the reponse is broken up into multiple chuncks. I don't have an example handy, but I can get one. Any reason why a response body of around this size(86 bytes) would be broken up into multiple chunks?

Have talkback commands fallen out of popularity?

[Vinod]

Try adding "&headers=false" to your request. That should shorten it up and cause the response to be less likely to be chunked.

Also, are you sending a HTTP/1.1 or HTTP/1.0 request? Try sending a HTTP/1.0 if your device cannot handle a HTTP/1.1 request.

[Zachariah Belding]

"Try adding "&headers=false" to your request. That should shorten it up and cause the response to be less likely to be chunked."

Thank you! This will shorten the response quite a bit and reduce data usage!

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Tue, 12 Jan 2021 11:35:37 GMT
Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8
Transfer-Encoding: chunked
Connection: keep-alive
Status: 200 OK
ETag: W/"050a4384880d48b11dc203846aea209c"
Cache-Control: max-age=0, private, must-revalidate
X-Request-Id: 79cb41b5-e471-4a0e-9201-f0f45b21581b
X-Runtime: 0.074885
X-Powered-By: Phusion Passenger 4.0.57
Server: nginx/1.9.3 + Phusion Passenger 4.0.57
 
86
{"executed_at":"2021-01-12T11:35:37Z","position":null,"id":21390658,"command_string":"146wateron","created_at":"2021-01-12T11:33:06Z"}
0
 

After looking at my issue more, I have determined that I was wrong about the chunked encoding. I am working with raw tcp sockets and I was not giving the response enough time to be fully buffered in the cellular modem I am using. Adding a 250ms delay after the modem first tells me data is available seems to have fixed the issue.