Simple Http Client

A simple wrapper of Apache's Http Client Library that tries to make interacting with HTTP Easy

Example Usage

// Create a client that only returns the response body
SimpleHttpClient simpleClient = SimpleClientBuilder.create().build();

// Or create a Response Client that returns a responses whichs includes
// both header and body information
ResponseClient responseClient = ResponseClientBuilder.create().build();

// Download Google's homepage
simpleClient.get("http://google.com") 

// Resolve JSON Objects (provided via org.json)
simpleClient.getJSON("http://localhost:3000/example.json")

// Resolve XML Document (provided via jdom)
simpleClient.getDocument("http://localhost:3000/example.xml")

// Returns a response object of the the requested url sans content
simpleClient.head("http://localhost:3000/example.json") 

// Put a resource with custom headers
responseClient.put("http://localhost:3000/resources", "/tmp/resource.json", new BasicHeader("key", "value"))

// Some as above with no headers
responseClient.put("http://localhost:3000/resources", "/tmp/resource.json")

// Post a resource with custom headers
responseClient.post("http://localhost:3000/resource", "/tmp/resource.json", new BasicHeader("key", "value"))

// POST to a resource with no body and multiple headers
responseClient.post(
    "http://localhost:3000/resource", 
    new BasicHeader("key", "value"),
    new BasicHeader("anotherHeader", "anotherValue")
)

What about authentication?

SimpleClientBuilder client = SimpleClientBuilder.create().credentialProvider(
    CredentialsProviderBuilder.BasicUserNamePasswordBuilder(
        "username", "password"
    )
).build();

Why?

Sometimes I find myself needing to make a custom wrapper for a REST API while writing Java.

Notes

All requests made with this library are appropriately closed. I've noticed most code examples of the Apache Http Client library found across the Internet don't actually close connections/io properly. This might explain a lot of things about other Java code that interacts with Web APIs. :) If you look at the code in this repo, you will see that there is an attempt to (try to) eloquently close resources whenever necessary. For example:

try (CloseableHttpResponse response = httpClient.execute(httpGet)) { validateResponse(response, url); logger.debug(String.format("GET %s: %s", url, response.getStatusLine())); return consume(response); // Content is parsed } catch (IOException e) { // connection is closed via try-with-resources logger.error(e); }
This library wraps Apache Http Client 4.3.
All requests are logged via Log4j to make debugging easier. For example:

// [Request Type] [Resource Requested]: [Response Status Line] 2015-11-19 00:29:55,770 DEBUG [main] http.SimpleHttpClient (SimpleHttpClient.java:202) - GET http://127.0.0.1:1080/: HTTP/1.1 200 OK

Requirements

JDK 1.8

Dependencies

Compile time dependencies listed below:

[user@deathstar simple-http-client]$ mvn dependency:tree | grep -v 'test'
[INFO] Scanning for projects...
[INFO]                                                                         
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] Building com.nycjv321:simple-http-client 1.1-SNAPSHOT
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] 
[INFO] --- maven-dependency-plugin:2.8:tree (default-cli) @ simple-http-client ---
[INFO] com.nycjv321:simple-http-client:jar:1.1-SNAPSHOT
[INFO] +- org.apache.httpcomponents:httpclient:jar:4.3:compile
[INFO] |  +- org.apache.httpcomponents:httpcore:jar:4.3:compile
[INFO] |  +- commons-logging:commons-logging:jar:1.1.3:compile
[INFO] |  \- commons-codec:commons-codec:jar:1.6:compile
[INFO] +- org.apache.logging.log4j:log4j-api:jar:2.1:compile
[INFO] +- org.apache.logging.log4j:log4j-core:jar:2.1:compile
[INFO] +- org.json:json:jar:20090211:compile
[INFO] +- org.jdom:jdom:jar:2.0.2:compile
[INFO] +- org.jetbrains:annotations:jar:15.0:compile
[INFO] +- com.nycjv321:utilities:jar:1.4:compile
[INFO] +- org.apache.commons:commons-lang3:jar:3.4:compile
[INFO] +- commons-io:commons-io:jar:2.4:compile
[INFO] \- com.google.guava:guava:jar:18.0:compile

nycjv321 / simple-http-client