HttpClient (Java SE 11 & JDK 11 [ad-hoc build]) (original) (raw)

An HTTP Client.

An HttpClient can be used to send requests and retrieve their responses. An HttpClient is created through a builder. The builder can be used to configure per-client state, like: the preferred protocol version ( HTTP/1.1 or HTTP/2 ), whether to follow redirects, a proxy, an authenticator, etc. Once built, an HttpClient is immutable, and can be used to send multiple requests.

An HttpClient provides configuration information, and resource sharing, for all requests send through it.

A BodyHandler must be supplied for each HttpRequest sent. The BodyHandler determines how to handle the response body, if any. Once an HttpResponse is received, the headers, response code, and body (typically) are available. Whether the response body bytes have been read or not depends on the type, T, of the response body.

Requests can be sent either synchronously or asynchronously:

• send(HttpRequest, BodyHandler) blocks until the request has been sent and the response has been received.
• sendAsync(HttpRequest, BodyHandler) sends the request and receives the response asynchronously. The sendAsync method returns immediately with a CompletableFuture<HttpResponse>. The CompletableFuture completes when the response becomes available. The returned CompletableFuture can be combined in different ways to declare dependencies among several asynchronous tasks.

Synchronous Example

   HttpClient client = HttpClient.newBuilder()
        .version(Version.HTTP_1_1)
        .followRedirects(Redirect.NORMAL)
        .proxy(ProxySelector.of(new InetSocketAddress("proxy.example.com", 80)))
        .authenticator(Authenticator.getDefault())
        .build();
   HttpResponse<String> response = client.send(request, BodyHandlers.ofString());
   System.out.println(response.statusCode());
   System.out.println(response.body());  

Asynchronous Example

   HttpRequest request = HttpRequest.newBuilder()
        .uri(URI.create("https://foo.com/"))
        .timeout(Duration.ofMinutes(1))
        .header("Content-Type", "application/json")
        .POST(BodyPublishers.ofFile(Paths.get("file.json")))
        .build();
   client.sendAsync(request, BodyHandlers.ofString())
        .thenApply(HttpResponse::body)
        .thenAccept(System.out::println);  

Security checks

If a security manager is present then security checks are performed by the HTTP Client's sending methods. An appropriate URLPermission is required to access the destination server, and proxy server if one has been configured. The form of the URLPermission required to access a proxy has a method parameter of "CONNECT" (for all kinds of proxying) and a URL string of the form "socket://host:port" where host and port specify the proxy's address.