Package org.apache.commons.httpclient

Classes and interfaces supporting the client side of the HTTP protocol.

The HttpClient component supports the client-side of RFC 1945 (HTTP/1.0) and RFC 2616 (HTTP/1.1), several related specifications (RFC 2109 (Cookies), RFC 2617 (HTTP Authentication), etc.), and provides a framework by which new request types (methods) or HTTP extensions can can be easily created or supported.

Interface Summary

Credentials Authentication credentials.
HttpConnectionManager An interface for classes that manage HttpConnections.
HttpMethod HttpMethod interface represents a request to be sent via a HTTP connection and a corresponding response.
HttpMethodRetryHandler A handler for determining if an HttpMethod should be retried after a recoverable exception during execution.
MethodRetryHandler A handler for determining if an HttpMethod should be retried after a recoverable exception during execution.

Class Summary

ChunkedInputStream Transparently coalesces chunks of a HTTP stream that uses Transfer-Encoding chunked.
ChunkedOutputStream Implements HTTP chunking support.
CircularRedirectException Signals a circular redirect
ConnectionPoolTimeoutException A timeout while connecting waiting for an available connection from an HttpConnectionManager.
ConnectMethod Establishes a tunneled HTTP connection via the CONNECT method.
ConnectTimeoutException A timeout while connecting to an HTTP server or waiting for an available connection from an HttpConnectionManager.
ContentLengthInputStream Cuts the wrapped InputStream off after a specified number of bytes.
Cookie HTTP "magic-cookie" represents a piece of state information that the HTTP agent and the target server can exchange to maintain a session.
DefaultHttpMethodRetryHandler The default HttpMethodRetryHandler used by HttpMethods.
DefaultMethodRetryHandler The default MethodRetryHandler used by HttpMethodBase.
Header An HTTP header.
HeaderElement One element of an HTTP header's value.
HeaderGroup A class for combining a set of headers.
HostConfiguration Holds all of the variables needed to describe an HTTP connection to a host.
HttpClient An HTTP "user-agent", containing an HTTP state and one or more HTTP connections, to which HTTP methods can be applied.
HttpClientError Signals that an error has occurred.
HttpConnection An abstraction of an HTTP InputStream and OutputStream pair, together with the relevant attributes.
HttpConstants HTTP content conversion routines.
HttpException Signals that an HTTP or HttpClient exception has occurred.
HttpHost Holds all of the variables needed to describe an HTTP connection to a host.
HttpMethodBase An abstract base implementation of HttpMethod.
HttpParser A utility class for parsing http header values according to RFC-2616 Section 4 and 19.3.
HttpRecoverableException Signals that an HTTP or HttpClient exception has occurred.
HttpsURL The HTTPS URL.
HttpState A container for HTTP attributes that may persist from request to request, such as cookies and authentication credentials.
HttpStatus Constants enumerating the HTTP status codes.
HttpURL The HTTP URL.
HttpVersion HTTP version, as specified in RFC 2616.
MultiThreadedHttpConnectionManager Manages a set of HttpConnections for various HostConfigurations.
NameValuePair A simple class encapsulating a name/value pair.
NoHttpResponseException Signals that the target server failed to respond with a valid HTTP response.
NTCredentialsCredentials for use with the NTLM authentication scheme which requires additional information.
ProtocolException Signals that an HTTP protocol violation has occurred.
ProxyClient A client that provides sockets for communicating through HTTP proxies via the HTTP CONNECT method.
ProxyClient.ConnectResponse Contains the method used to execute the connect along with the created socket.
ProxyHost Holds all of the variables needed to describe an HTTP connection to a proxy.
RedirectException Signals violation of HTTP specification caused by an invalid redirect
SimpleHttpConnectionManager A connection manager that provides access to a single HttpConnection.
StatusLine Represents a Status-Line as returned from a HTTP server.
URI The interface for the URI(Uniform Resource Identifiers) version of RFC 2396.
URI.DefaultCharsetChanged The charset-changed normal operation to represent to be required to alert to user the fact the default charset is changed.
URI.LocaleToCharsetMap A mapping to determine the (somewhat arbitrarily) preferred charset for a given locale.
URIException The URI parsing and escape encoding exception.
UsernamePasswordCredentials Username and password Credentials.

Classes and interfaces supporting the client side of the HTTP protocol.

The HttpClient component supports the client-side of RFC 1945 (HTTP/1.0) and RFC 2616 (HTTP/1.1), several related specifications (RFC 2109 (Cookies), RFC 2617 (HTTP Authentication), etc.), and provides a framework by which new request types (methods) or HTTP extensions can can be easily created or supported.

The basis for the abstraction is provided by three types:

and several simple bean-style classes:

HttpClient provides a simple "user-agent" implementation that will suffice for many applications, but whose use is not required.

HttpClient also provides several utilities that may be useful when extending the framework:

HttpClient Configuration with Java Properties

Java properties can be set at run time with the -Dname=value command line arguments to the application that uses HttpClient. These properties can also be set programaticly by calling System.getProperties().setProperty(name, value). This is the list of properties that HttpClient recognizes:
NameTypeEffect
httpclient.useragentStringSets the User-Agent string to be sent on every HTTP request.
httpclient.authentication.preemptivebooleanSends authorization credentials without requiring explicit requests from the web server

Copyright (c) 1999-2005 - Apache Software Foundation