Capacitor HTTP Plugin and AbortController: Current Cancellation Support?

Direct Answers

1. No official plan has been announced. As of Capacitor 6.x, the HTTP plugin does not expose a cancellation API that aborts the underlying native request. Community issues exist, but the core team has not committed to a roadmap item.
2. If introduced, it would likely coexist with timeout. A native abort implementation would probably use AbortController internally, making timeout a convenience wrapper rather than a replacement.
3. Best practice today: set a reasonable timeout and, on web, wrap the call with your own AbortController to abort the fetch. On iOS/Android, accept that the request may complete in the background; ignore the response after the promise rejects.

Confirmed Behaviour (Capacitor 6.x)

• The timeout option rejects the returned promise after the specified milliseconds, but the native HTTP stack (NSURLSession on iOS, OkHttp on Android, fetch on web) continues the request.
• Passing an AbortSignal via the signal option is ignored; the plugin does not wire the signal to the native layer.
• No distinct error class for timeouts—rejections surface as generic errors.

Likely Explanation (Not Yet Verified)

Adding true cancellation requires platform-specific work: NSURLSessionTask.cancel() on iOS, Call.cancel() on OkHttp, and AbortController on web. The plugin's current architecture treats the native request as fire-and-forget once dispatched, so a cancellation API would need a new code path and likely a minor version bump.

Practical Workaround

// Web-only true abort
const controller = new AbortController();
const id = setTimeout(() => controller.abort(), 5000);
try {
  const res = await Http.get({ url, signal: controller.signal });
} finally {
  clearTimeout(id);
}

On native, the same pattern compiles but the signal is ignored; the request continues. Measure with a proxy (Charles, Proxyman) or Android Studio Profiler to confirm background traffic.

Diagnostic Detail Needed

Which platforms are you targeting (iOS, Android, web, or all)? The workaround differs: web can achieve true abort today; native cannot without a plugin fork or a community plugin like @capacitor-community/http that may already implement cancellation.