Using the Client

Simple GET request

HttpRequest httpRequest = HttpRequest.get("http://jodd.org");
HttpResponse response = httpRequest.send();

System.out.println(response);

All HTTP classes offer a fluent interface, too; so you can write:

HttpResponse response = HttpRequest.get("http://jodd.org").send();

System.out.println(response);

You can build the request step by step:

HttpRequest request = new HttpRequest();
request
    .method("GET")
    .protocol("http")
    .host("srv")
    .port(8080)
    .path("/api/jsonws/user/get-user-by-id");

Reading Response

When an HTTP request is sent, the whole response is stored in the HttpResponse instance. You can use the response for various stuff: read the statusCode() or statusPhrase(); or any header attribute.

A common thing is how to read the received response body. You may use one of the following methods:

  • bodyRaw() - raw body content, always in ISO-8859-1 encoding.

  • bodyText() - body text, i.e. string encoded as specified by Content-Type header.

  • bodyBytes() - returns the raw body as a byte array, so e.g. downloaded file

    can be saved.

The character encoding used in bodyText() is one set in the response headers. If the response does not specify the encoding in its headers (but e.g. only on the HTML page), you must specify the encoding with charset() the method before calling bodyText(). {: .attn}

Query parameters

Query parameters may be specified in the URL line (but then they have to be encoded correctly):

HttpResponse response = HttpRequest
    .get("http://srv:8080/api/user/get-user-by-id?userId=10194")
    .send();

A better and recommended way is with the query() method:

HttpResponse response = HttpRequest
    .get("http://srv:8080/api/user/get-user-by-id")
    .query("userId", "10194")
    .send();

You can use query() for each parameter, or pass many arguments in one call (varargs). You can also provide Map<String, String> as a parameter too.

Query parameters (as well as headers and form parameters) can be duplicated. Therefore, they are stored in an array internally. Use method removeQuery to remove some parameters or overloaded methods to replace a parameter.

Finally, you can reach the internal query map, that actually holds all parameters:

Map<String, Object[]> httpParams = request.query();
httpParams.put("userId", new String[] {"10194"});

Authentication

Basic authentication is made easy:

request.basicAuthentication("user", "password");

Token-based authentication:

request.tokenAuthentication("M4ORM....");

POST and form parameters

HttpResponse response = HttpRequest
    .post("http://srv:8080/api/jsonws/user/get-user-by-id")
    .form("userId", "10194")
    .send();

Use form() in the same way as query() to specify form parameters. Everything that is said for query() applies to the form().

Upload files

Again, it's easy: just add the file form parameter. Here is one real-world example:

HttpRequest httpRequest = HttpRequest
    .post("http://srv:8080/api/dlapp/add-file-entry")
    .form(
        "repositoryId", "10178",
        "folderId", "11219",
        "sourceFileName", "a.zip",
        "mimeType", "application/zip",
        "title", "test",
        "description", "Upload test",
        "changeLog", "testing...",
        "file", new File("d:\\a.jpg.zip")
    );

HttpResponse httpResponse = httpRequest.send();

Monitor upload progress

When uploading a large file, it is helpful to monitor the progress. For that purpose, you can use HttpProgressListener like this:

HttpResponse response = HttpRequest
    .post("http://localhost:8081/hello")
    .form("file", file)
    .monitor(new HttpProgressListener() {
        @Override
        public void transferred(long len) {
            System.out.println(len/size);
        }
    })
    .send();

Before the upload starts, HttpProgressListener calculates the callbackSize - the size of the chunk in bytes that will be transferred. By default, this size equals 1% of the total size. Moreover, it is never less than 512 bytes.

HttpProgressListener contains the inner field size with the total size of the request. Note that this is the size of the whole request, not only the files! This is the actual number of bytes that are going to be sent, and it is always a bit larger than file size (due to protocol overhead).

Headers

Add or reach header parameters with the method header(). Some common header parameters are already defined as methods, so you will find contentType() etc.

There are some shortcut methods that are commonly used:

  • contentTypeJson() - specifies JSON content type

  • acceptJson() - accepts JSON content.

GZipped content

Just unzip() the response.

HttpResponse response = HttpRequest
    .get("http://jodd.org")
    .acceptEncoding("gzip")
    .send();

System.out.println(response.unzip());

The unzip() method is safe; it will not fail if the response is not zipped.

Set the body

You can set the request body manually:

HttpResponse response = HttpRequest
    .get("http://srv:8080/api/jsonws/invoke")
    .body("{'a':1 23, 'b': 'hi'}")
    .basicAuthentication("test", "test")
    .send();

Setting the body discards all previously set form() parameters.

Charsets and Encodings

By default, query and form parameters are encoded in UTF-8.

    HttpResponse response = HttpRequest
        .get("http://server/index.html")
        .queryEncoding("CP1251")
        .query("param", "value")
        .send();

You can set form encoding similarly. Moreover, form posting detects the value of charset in the "Content-Type" header, and if present, it will be used.

With received content, body() method always returns the raw string (encoded as ISO-8859-1). To get the string in usable form, use the method bodyText(). This method uses a provided charset from the "Content-Type" header and encodes the body string.

Following redirection

By default HttpRequest does not follow redirection response. This can be changed by setting the followRedirects(true). Now redirect responses are followed. When redirection is enabled, the original URL will NOT be preserved in the request object!

Asynchronous sending

When send() is called, the program blocks until the response is received. By using sendAsync() the execution of the sending is passed to Javas fork-join pool, and will be executed asynchronously. Method returns CompletableFuture<Response>.

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