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http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software distributed under the License is distributed on an “AS IS” BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. See the License for the specific language governing permissions and limitations under the License.
Client API:
http://hc.apache.org/httpcomponents-client/httpclient/apidocs/index.html
Core API:
http://hc.apache.org/httpcomponents-core-4.0.1/httpcore/apidocs/index.html
前言
1。 HttpClient的范围
2。HttpClient不是什么
1。基础
1.1。执行请求
1.1.1。 HTTP请求
1.1.2。 HTTP响应
1.1.3。信息标题
1.1.4。 HTTP实体
1.1.4.1。重复实体
1.1.4.2。使用HTTP实体
1.1.5。确保低级别的资源释放
1.1.6。消费实体内容
1.1.7。生产实体内容
1.1.7.1。动态内容实体
1.1.7.2。 HTML表单
1.1.7.3。内容组块
1.1.8。响应处理程序
1.2。 HTTP的执行上下文
1.3。异常处理
1.3.1。 HTTP传输安全
1.3.2。幂等方法
1.3.3。异常自动恢复
1.3.4。请求重试处理程序
1.4。中止请求
1.5。拦截HTTP协议
1.6。 HTTP参数
1.6.1。参数层次
1.6.2。 HTTP参数类
1.7。执行HTTP请求参数
2。连接管理
2.1。连接参数
2.2。持久连接
2.3。 HTTP连接路由
2.3.1。路由计算
2.3.2。安全HTTP连接
2.4。HTTP route参数
2.5。Socket工厂
2.5.1。安全套接字分层
2.5.2。 SSL / TLS的定制
2.5.3。主机名验证
2.6。协议策略schemes
2.7。 HttpClient的代理配置
2.8。 HTTP连接管理
2.8.1。连接操作者
2.8.2。管理连接和连接管理器
2.8.3。简单的连接管理器
2.8.4。连接池管理器
2.8.5。关闭连接管理器
2.9。连接管理参数
2.10。多线程执行请求
2.11。连接驱逐政策
2.12。连接保持活动的策略
3。 HTTP状态管理
3.1。 HTTP的cookies
3.1.1。 Cookie的版本
3.2。Cookie规格
3.3。HTTP Cookie和状态管理参数
3.4。Cookie规范注册表
3.5。选择Cookie政策
3.6。自定义Cookie政策
3.7。 Cookie的持久性
3.8。 HTTP状态管理和执行情况
3.9。每用户/线程的状态管理
4。 HTTP认证
4.1。用户凭据
4.2。认证计划
4.3。 HTTP认证参数
4.4。认证计划的注册表
4.5。全权证书供应商
4.6。 HTTP身份验证和执行情况
4.7。先发制人认证
4.8。 NTLM身份验证
4.8.1。 NTLM身份连接持久性
5。 HTTP客户端服务
5.1。 HttpClient的外观
5.2。 HttpClient的参数
5.3。 Automcatic处理重定向
5.4。 HTTP客户端和执行上下文
6。高级主题
6.1。自定义客户端连接
6.2。 HTTP连接状态
6.2.1。用户标记处理程序
6.2.2。用户令牌和执行情况
6.2.2.1。持久性连接状态
The Hyper-Text Transfer Protocol (HTTP) is perhaps the most significant protocol used on the Internet today. Web services, network-enabled appliances and the growth of network computing continue to expand the role of the HTTP protocol beyond user-driven web browsers, while increasing the number of applications that require HTTP support.
Although the java.net package provides basic functionality for accessing resources via HTTP, it doesn’t provide the full flexibility or functionality needed by many applications. HttpClient seeks to fill this void by providing an efficient, up-to-date, and feature-rich package implementing the client side of the most recent HTTP standards and recommendations.
Designed for extension while providing robust support for the base HTTP protocol, HttpClient may be of interest to anyone building HTTP-aware client applications such as web browsers, web service clients, or systems that leverage or extend the HTTP protocol for distributed communication.
The most essential function of HttpClient is to execute HTTP methods. Execution of an HTTP method involves one or several HTTP request / HTTP response exchanges, usually handled internally by HttpClient. The user is expected to provide a request object to execute and HttpClient is expected to transmit the request to the target server return a corresponding response object, or throw an exception if execution was unsuccessful.
Quite naturally, the main entry point of the HttpClient API is the HttpClient interface that defines the contract described above.
Here is an example of request execution process in its simplest form:
HttpClient httpclient = new DefaultHttpClient();
HttpGet httpget = new HttpGet("http://localhost/");
HttpResponse response = httpclient.execute(httpget);
HttpEntity entity = response.getEntity();
if (entity != null) {
InputStream instream = entity.getContent();
int l;
byte[] tmp = new byte[2048];
while ((l = instream.read(tmp)) != -1) {
}
}
All HTTP requests have a request line consisting a method name, a request URI and a HTTP protocol version.
HttpClient supports out of the box all HTTP methods defined in the HTTP/1.1 specification: GET
, HEAD
, POST
, PUT
, DELETE
, TRACE
and OPTIONS
. There is a special class for each method type.: HttpGet
, HttpHead
, HttpPost
, HttpPut
, HttpDelete
, HttpTrace
, and HttpOptions
.
The Request-URI is a Uniform Resource Identifier that identifies the resource upon which to apply the request. HTTP request URIs consist of a protocol scheme, host name, optional port, resource path, optional query, and optional fragment.
HttpGet httpget = new HttpGet(
"http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=httpclient&btnG=Google+Search&aq=f&oq=");
HttpClient provides a number of utility methods to simplify creation and modification of request URIs.
URI can be assembled programmatically:
URI uri = URIUtils.createURI("http", "www.google.com", -1, "/search",
"q=httpclient&btnG=Google+Search&aq=f&oq=", null);
HttpGet httpget = new HttpGet(uri);
System.out.println(httpget.getURI());
stdout >
http://www.google.com/search?q=httpclient&btnG=Google+Search&aq=f&oq=
Query string can also be generated from individual parameters:
List qparams = new ArrayList();
qparams.add(new BasicNameValuePair("q", "httpclient"));
qparams.add(new BasicNameValuePair("btnG", "Google Search"));
qparams.add(new BasicNameValuePair("aq", "f"));
qparams.add(new BasicNameValuePair("oq", null));
URI uri = URIUtils.createURI("http", "www.google.com", -1, "/search",
URLEncodedUtils.format(qparams, "UTF-8"), null);
HttpGet httpget = new HttpGet(uri);
System.out.println(httpget.getURI());
stdout >
http://www.google.com/search?q=httpclient&btnG=Google+Search&aq=f&oq=
HTTP response is a message sent by the server back to the client after having received and interpreted a request message. The first line of that message consists of the protocol version followed by a numeric status code and its associated textual phrase.
HttpResponse response = new BasicHttpResponse(HttpVersion.HTTP_1_1,
HttpStatus.SC_OK, "OK");
System.out.println(response.getProtocolVersion());
System.out.println(response.getStatusLine().getStatusCode());
System.out.println(response.getStatusLine().getReasonPhrase());
System.out.println(response.getStatusLine().toString());
stdout >
HTTP/1.1
200
OK
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
An HTTP message can contain a number of headers describing properties of the message such as the content length, content type and so on. HttpClient provides methods to retrieve, add, remove and enumerate headers.
HttpResponse response = new BasicHttpResponse(HttpVersion.HTTP_1_1,
HttpStatus.SC_OK, "OK");
response.addHeader("Set-Cookie",
"c1=a; path=/; domain=localhost");
response.addHeader("Set-Cookie",
"c2=b; path=\"/\", c3=c; domain=\"localhost\"");
Header h1 = response.getFirstHeader("Set-Cookie");
System.out.println(h1);
Header h2 = response.getLastHeader("Set-Cookie");
System.out.println(h2);
Header[] hs = response.getHeaders("Set-Cookie");
System.out.println(hs.length);
stdout >
Set-Cookie: c1=a; path=/; domain=localhost
Set-Cookie: c2=b; path="/", c3=c; domain="localhost"
2
The most efficient way to obtain all headers of a given type is by using the HeaderIterator
interface.
HttpResponse response = new BasicHttpResponse(HttpVersion.HTTP_1_1,
HttpStatus.SC_OK, "OK");
response.addHeader("Set-Cookie",
"c1=a; path=/; domain=localhost");
response.addHeader("Set-Cookie",
"c2=b; path=\"/\", c3=c; domain=\"localhost\"");
HeaderIterator it = response.headerIterator("Set-Cookie");
while (it.hasNext()) {
System.out.println(it.next());
}
stdout >
Set-Cookie: c1=a; path=/; domain=localhost
Set-Cookie: c2=b; path="/", c3=c; domain="localhost"
It also provides convenience methods to parse HTTP messages into individual header elements.
HttpResponse response = new BasicHttpResponse(HttpVersion.HTTP_1_1,
HttpStatus.SC_OK, "OK");
response.addHeader("Set-Cookie",
"c1=a; path=/; domain=localhost");
response.addHeader("Set-Cookie",
"c2=b; path=\"/\", c3=c; domain=\"localhost\"");
HeaderElementIterator it = new BasicHeaderElementIterator(
response.headerIterator("Set-Cookie"));
while (it.hasNext()) {
HeaderElement elem = it.nextElement();
System.out.println(elem.getName() + " = " + elem.getValue());
NameValuePair[] params = elem.getParameters();
for (int i = 0; i < params.length; i++) {
System.out.println(" " + params[i]);
}
}
stdout >
c1 = a
path=/
domain=localhost
c2 = b
path=/
c3 = c
domain=localhost
HTTP messages can carry a content entity associated with the request or response. Entities can be found in some requests and in some responses, as they are optional. Requests that use entities are referred to as entity enclosing requests. The HTTP specification defines two entity enclosing methods: POST
and PUT
. Responses are usually expected to enclose a content entity. There are exceptions to this rule such as responses to HEAD
method and 204 No Content
, 304 Not Modified
, 205 Reset Content
responses.
HttpClient distinguishes three kinds of entities, depending on where their content originates:
This distinction is important for connection management when streaming out content from an HTTP response. For request entities that are created by an application and only sent using HttpClient, the difference between streamed and self-contained is of little importance. In that case, it is suggested to consider non-repeatable entities as streamed, and those that are repeatable as self-contained.
1.1.4.1. 重复实体
An entity can be repeatable, meaning its content can be read more than once. This is only possible with self contained entities (like ByteArrayEntity
or StringEntity
)
1.1.4.2. 使用HTTP实体
Since an entity can represent both binary and character content, it has support for character encodings (to support the latter, ie. character content).
The entity is created when executing a request with enclosed content or when the request was successful and the response body is used to send the result back to the client.
To read the content from the entity, one can either retrieve the input stream via the HttpEntity#getContent()
method, which returns an java.io.InputStream
, or one can supply an output stream to the HttpEntity#writeTo(OutputStream)
method, which will return once all content has been written to the given stream.
When the entity has been received with an incoming message, the methods HttpEntity#getContentType()
and HttpEntity#getContentLength()
methods can be used for reading the common metadata such as Content-Type
and Content-Length
headers (if they are available). Since the Content-Type
header can contain a character encoding for text mime-types like text/plain or text/html, the HttpEntity#getContentEncoding()
method is used to read this information. If the headers aren’t available, a length of -1 will be returned, and NULL for the content type. If the Content-Type
header is available, a Header
object will be returned.
When creating an entity for a outgoing message, this meta data has to be supplied by the creator of the entity.
StringEntity myEntity = new StringEntity("important message",
"UTF-8");
System.out.println(myEntity.getContentType());
System.out.println(myEntity.getContentLength());
System.out.println(EntityUtils.getContentCharSet(myEntity));
System.out.println(EntityUtils.toString(myEntity));
System.out.println(EntityUtils.toByteArray(myEntity).length);
stdout >
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
17
UTF-8
important message
17
When finished with a response entity, it’s important to ensure that all entity content has been fully consumed, so that the connection could be safely returned to the connection pool and re-used by the connection manager for subsequent requests. The easiest way to do so is to call the HttpEntity#consumeContent(
) method to consume any available content on the stream. HttpClient will automatically release the underlying connection back to the connection manager as soon as it detects that the end of the content stream has been reached. The HttpEntity#consumeContent()
method is safe to call more than once.
There can be situations, however, when only a small portion of the entire response content needs to be retrieved and the performance penalty for consuming the remaining content and making the connection reusable is too high, one can simply terminate the request by calling HttpUriRequest#abort()
method.
HttpGet httpget = new HttpGet("http://localhost/");
HttpResponse response = httpclient.execute(httpget);
HttpEntity entity = response.getEntity();
if (entity != null) {
InputStream instream = entity.getContent();
int byteOne = instream.read();
int byteTwo = instream.read();
// Do not need the rest
httpget.abort();
}
The connection will not be reused, but all level resources held by it will be correctly deallocated.
The recommended way to consume content of an entity is by using its HttpEntity#getContent()
or HttpEntity#writeTo(OutputStream)
methods. HttpClient also comes with the EntityUtils
class, which exposes several static methods to more easily read the content or information from an entity. Instead of reading the java.io.InputStream
directly, one can retrieve the whole content body in a string / byte array by using the methods from this class. However, the use of EntityUtils
is strongly discouraged unless the response entities originate from a trusted HTTP server and are known to be of limited length.
HttpGet httpget = new HttpGet("http://localhost/");
HttpResponse response = httpclient.execute(httpget);
HttpEntity entity = response.getEntity();
if (entity != null) {
long len = entity.getContentLength();
if (len != -1 && len < 2048) {
System.out.println(EntityUtils.toString(entity));
} else {
// Stream content out
}
}
In some situations it may be necessary to be able to read entity content more than once. In this case entity content must be buffered in some way, either in memory or on disk. The simplest way to accomplish that is by wrapping the original entity with the BufferedHttpEntity
class. This will cause the content of the original entity to be read into a in-memory buffer. In all other ways the entity wrapper will be have the original one.
HttpGet httpget = new HttpGet("http://localhost/");
HttpResponse response = httpclient.execute(httpget);
HttpEntity entity = response.getEntity();
if (entity != null) {
entity = new BufferedHttpEntity(entity);
}
HttpClient provides several classes that can be used to efficiently stream out content though HTTP connections. Instances of those classes can be associated with entity enclosing requests such as POST
and PUT
in order to enclose entity content into outgoing HTTP requests. HttpClient provides several classes for most common data containers such as string, byte array, input stream, and file: StringEntity
, ByteArrayEntity
, InputStreamEntity
, and FileEntity
.
File file = new File("somefile.txt");
FileEntity entity = new FileEntity(file, "text/plain; charset=\"UTF-8\"");
HttpPost httppost = new HttpPost("http://localhost/action.do");
httppost.setEntity(entity);
Please note InputStreamEntity
is not repeatable, because it can only read from the underlying data stream once. Generally it is recommended to implement a custom HttpEntity
class which is self-contained instead of using generic InputStreamEntity
. FileEntity
can be a good starting point.
1.1.7.1. 动态内容实体
Often HTTP entities need to be generated dynamically based a particular execution context. HttpClient provides support for dynamic entities by using EntityTemplate
entity class and ContentProducer
interface. Content producers are objects which produce their content on demand, by writing it out to an output stream. They are expected to be able produce their content every time they are requested to do so. So entities created with EntityTemplate
are generally self-contained and repeatable.
ContentProducer cp = new ContentProducer() {
public void writeTo(OutputStream outstream) throws IOException {
Writer writer = new OutputStreamWriter(outstream, "UTF-8");
writer.write("");
writer.write(" ");
writer.write(" important stuff");
writer.write(" ");
writer.write(" ");
writer.flush();
}
};
HttpEntity entity = new EntityTemplate(cp);
HttpPost httppost = new HttpPost("http://localhost/handler.do");
httppost.setEntity(entity);
1.1.7.2. HTML表单
Many applications frequently need to simulate the process of submitting an HTML form, for instance, in order to log in to a web application or submit input data. HttpClient provides special entity class UrlEncodedFormEntity
to facilitate the process.
List formparams = new ArrayList();
formparams.add(new BasicNameValuePair("param1", "value1"));
formparams.add(new BasicNameValuePair("param2", "value2"));
UrlEncodedFormEntity entity = new UrlEncodedFormEntity(formparams, "UTF-8");
HttpPost httppost = new HttpPost("http://localhost/handler.do");
httppost.setEntity(entity);
This UrlEncodedFormEntity
instance will use the so called URL encoding to encode parameters and produce the following content:
param1=value1¶m2=value2
1.1.7.3. 内容分块
Generally it is recommended to let HttpClient choose the most appropriate transfer encoding based on the properties of the HTTP message being transferred. It is possible, however, to inform HttpClient that the chunk coding is preferred by setting HttpEntity#setChunked()
to true. Please note that HttpClient will use this flag as a hint only. This value well be ignored when using HTTP protocol versions that do not support chunk coding, such as HTTP/1.0.
StringEntity entity = new StringEntity("important message",
"text/plain; charset=\"UTF-8\"");
entity.setChunked(true);
HttpPost httppost = new HttpPost("http://localhost/acrtion.do");
httppost.setEntity(entity);
The simplest and the most convenient way to handle responses is by using ResponseHandler
interface. This method completely relieves the user from having to worry about connection management. When using a ResponseHandler
HttpClient will automatically take care of ensuring release of the connection back to the connection manager regardless whether the request execution succeeds or causes an exception.
HttpClient httpclient = new DefaultHttpClient();
HttpGet httpget = new HttpGet("http://localhost/");
ResponseHandler handler = new ResponseHandler() {
public byte[] handleResponse(
HttpResponse response) throws ClientProtocolException, IOException {
HttpEntity entity = response.getEntity();
if (entity != null) {
return EntityUtils.toByteArray(entity);
} else {
return null;
}
}
};
byte[] response = httpclient.execute(httpget, handler);
Originally HTTP has been designed as a stateless, response-request oriented protocol. However, real world applications often need to be able to persist state information through several logically related request-response exchanges. In order to enable applications to maintain a processing state HttpClient allows HTTP requests to be executed within a particular execution context, referred to as HTTP context. Multiple logically related requests can participate in a logical session if the same context is reused between consecutive requests. HTTP context functions similarly to java.util.Map
. It is simply a collection of arbitrary named values. Application can populate context attributes prior to a request execution or examine the context after the execution has been completed.
In the course of HTTP request execution HttpClient adds the following attributes to the execution context:
HttpConnection
instance representing the actual connection to the target server.HttpHost
instance representing the connection target.HttpHost
instance representing the connection proxy, if usedHttpRequest
instance representing the actual HTTP request.HttpResponse
instance representing the actual HTTP response.java.lang.Boolean
object representing the flag indicating whether the actual request has been fully transmitted to the connection target.For instance, in order to determine the final redirect target, one can examine the value of the http.target_host
attribute after the request execution:
DefaultHttpClient httpclient = new DefaultHttpClient();
HttpContext localContext = new BasicHttpContext();
HttpGet httpget = new HttpGet("http://www.google.com/");
HttpResponse response = httpclient.execute(httpget, localContext);
HttpHost target = (HttpHost) localContext.getAttribute(
ExecutionContext.HTTP_TARGET_HOST);
System.out.println("Final target: " + target);
HttpEntity entity = response.getEntity();
if (entity != null) {
entity.consumeContent();
}
stdout >
Final target: http://www.google.ch
HttpClient can throw two types of exceptions: java.io.IOException
in case of an I/O failure such as socket timeout or an socket reset and HttpException
that signals an HTTP failure such as a violation of the HTTP protocol. Usually I/O errors are considered non-fatal and recoverable, whereas HTTP protocol errors are considered fatal and cannot be automatically recovered from.
It is important to understand that the HTTP protocol is not well suited for all types of applications. HTTP is a simple request/response oriented protocol which was initially designed to support static or dynamically generated content retrieval. It has never been intended to support transactional operations. For instance, the HTTP server will consider its part of the contract fulfilled if it succeeds in receiving and processing the request, generating a response and sending a status code back to the client. The server will make no attempts to roll back the transaction if the client fails to receive the response in its entirety due to a read timeout, a request cancellation or a system crash. If the client decides to retry the same request, the server will inevitably end up executing the same transaction more than once. In some cases this may lead to application data corruption or inconsistent application state.
Even though HTTP has never been designed to support transactional processing, it can still be used as a transport protocol for mission critical applications provided certain conditions are met. To ensure HTTP transport layer safety the system must ensure the idempotency of HTTP methods on the application layer.
HTTP/1.1 specification defines idempotent method as
[Methods can also have the property of "idempotence" in that (aside from error or expiration issues) the side-effects of N > 0 identical requests is the same as for a single request]
In other words the application ought to ensure that it is prepared to deal with the implications of multiple execution of the same method. This can be achieved, for instance, by providing a unique transaction id and by other means of avoiding execution of the same logical operation.
Please note that this problem is not specific to HttpClient. Browser based applications are subject to exactly the same issues related to HTTP methods non-idempotency.
HttpClient assumes non-entity enclosing methods such as GET
and HEAD
to be idempotent and entity enclosing methods such as POST
and PUT
to be not.
By default HttpClient attempts to automatically recover from I/O exceptions. The default auto-recovery mechanism is limited to just a few exceptions that are known to be safe.
HttpException
class).In order to enable a custom exception recovery mechanism one should provide an implementation of the HttpRequestRetryHandler
interface.
DefaultHttpClient httpclient = new DefaultHttpClient();
HttpRequestRetryHandler myRetryHandler = new HttpRequestRetryHandler() {
public boolean retryRequest(
IOException exception,
int executionCount,
HttpContext context) {
if (executionCount >= 5) {
// Do not retry if over max retry count
return false;
}
if (exception instanceof NoHttpResponseException) {
// Retry if the server dropped connection on us
return true;
}
if (exception instanceof SSLHandshakeException) {
// Do not retry on SSL handshake exception
return false;
}
HttpRequest request = (HttpRequest) context.getAttribute(
ExecutionContext.HTTP_REQUEST);
boolean idempotent = !(request instanceof HttpEntityEnclosingRequest);
if (idempotent) {
// Retry if the request is considered idempotent
return true;
}
return false;
}
};
httpclient.setHttpRequestRetryHandler(myRetryHandler);
In some situations HTTP request execution fail to complete within the expected time frame due to high load on the target server or too many concurrent requests issued on the client side. In such cases it may be necessary to terminate the request prematurely and unblock the execution thread blocked in a I/O operation. HTTP requests being executed by HttpClient can be aborted at any stage of execution by invoking HttpUriRequest#abort()
method. This method is thread-safe and can be called from any thread. When an HTTP request is aborted its execution thread blocked in an I/O operation is guaranteed to unblock by throwing a InterruptedIOException
HTTP protocol interceptor is a routine that implements a specific aspect of the HTTP protocol. Usually protocol interceptors are expected to act upon one specific header or a group of related headers of the incoming message or populate the outgoing message with one specific header or a group of related headers. Protocol interceptors can also manipulate content entities enclosed with messages, transparent content compression / decompression being a good example. Usually this is accomplished by using the ‘Decorator’ pattern where a wrapper entity class is used to decorate the original entity. Several protocol interceptors can be combined to form one logical unit.
Protocol interceptors can collaborate by sharing information – such as a processing state – through the HTTP execution context. Protocol interceptors can use HTTP context to store a processing state for one request or several consecutive requests.
Usually the order in which interceptors are executed should not matter as long as they do not depend on a particular state of the execution context. If protocol interceptors have interdependencies and therefore must be executed in a particular order, they should be added to the protocol processor in the same sequence as their expected execution order.
Protocol interceptors must be implemented as thread-safe. Similarly to servlets, protocol interceptors should not use instance variables unless access to those variables is synchronized.
This is an example of how local context can be used to persist a processing state between consecutive requests:
DefaultHttpClient httpclient = new DefaultHttpClient();
HttpContext localContext = new BasicHttpContext();
AtomicInteger count = new AtomicInteger(1);
localContext.setAttribute("count", count);
httpclient.addRequestInterceptor(new HttpRequestInterceptor() {
public void process(
final HttpRequest request,
final HttpContext context) throws HttpException, IOException {
AtomicInteger count = (AtomicInteger) context.getAttribute("count");
request.addHeader("Count", Integer.toString(count.getAndIncrement()));
}
});
HttpGet httpget = new HttpGet("http://localhost/");
for (int i = 0; i < 10; i++) {
HttpResponse response = httpclient.execute(httpget, localContext);
HttpEntity entity = response.getEntity();
if (entity != null) {
entity.consumeContent();
}
}
HttpParams interface represents a collection of immutable values that define a runtime behavior of a component. In many ways HttpParams
is similar to HttpContext
. The main distinction between the two lies in their use at runtime. Both interfaces represent a collection of objects that are organized as a map of keys to object values, but serve distinct purposes:
HttpParams
is intended to contain simple objects: integers, doubles, strings, collections and objects that remain immutable at runtime.HttpParams
is expected to be used in the ‘write once – ready many’ mode. HttpContext
is intended to contain complex objects that are very likely to mutate in the course of HTTP message processing.HttpParams
is to define a behavior of other components. Usually each complex component has its own HttpParams
object. The purpose of HttpContext
is to represent an execution state of an HTTP process. Usually the same execution context is shared among many collaborating objects.In the course of HTTP request execution HttpParams
of the HttpRequest
object are linked together with HttpParams
of the HttpClient
instance used to execute the request. This enables parameters set at the HTTP request level take precedence over HttpParams
set at the HTTP client level. The recommended practice is to set common parameters shared by all HTTP requests at the HTTP client level and selectively override specific parameters at the HTTP request level.
DefaultHttpClient httpclient = new DefaultHttpClient();
httpclient.getParams().setParameter(CoreProtocolPNames.PROTOCOL_VERSION,
HttpVersion.HTTP_1_0);
httpclient.getParams().setParameter(CoreProtocolPNames.HTTP_CONTENT_CHARSET,
"UTF-8");
HttpGet httpget = new HttpGet("http://www.google.com/");
httpget.getParams().setParameter(CoreProtocolPNames.PROTOCOL_VERSION,
HttpVersion.HTTP_1_1);
httpget.getParams().setParameter(CoreProtocolPNames.USE_EXPECT_CONTINUE,
Boolean.FALSE);
httpclient.addRequestInterceptor(new HttpRequestInterceptor() {
public void process(
final HttpRequest request,
final HttpContext context) throws HttpException, IOException {
System.out.println(request.getParams().getParameter(
CoreProtocolPNames.PROTOCOL_VERSION));
System.out.println(request.getParams().getParameter(
CoreProtocolPNames.HTTP_CONTENT_CHARSET));
System.out.println(request.getParams().getParameter(
CoreProtocolPNames.USE_EXPECT_CONTINUE));
System.out.println(request.getParams().getParameter(
CoreProtocolPNames.STRICT_TRANSFER_ENCODING));
}
});
stdout >
HTTP/1.1
UTF-8
false
null
HttpParams
interface allows for a great deal of flexibility in handling configuration of components. Most importantly, new parameters can be introduced without affecting binary compatibility with older versions. However, HttpParams
also has a certain disadvantage compared to regular Java beans: HttpParams
cannot be assembled using a DI framework. To mitigate the limitation, HttpClient includes a number of bean classes that can used in order to initialize HttpParams
objects using standard Java bean conventions.
HttpParams params = new BasicHttpParams();
HttpProtocolParamBean paramsBean = new HttpProtocolParamBean(params);
paramsBean.setVersion(HttpVersion.HTTP_1_1);
paramsBean.setContentCharset("UTF-8");
paramsBean.setUseExpectContinue(true);
System.out.println(params.getParameter(
CoreProtocolPNames.PROTOCOL_VERSION));
System.out.println(params.getParameter(
CoreProtocolPNames.HTTP_CONTENT_CHARSET));
System.out.println(params.getParameter(
CoreProtocolPNames.USE_EXPECT_CONTINUE));
System.out.println(params.getParameter(
CoreProtocolPNames.USER_AGENT));
stdout >
HTTP/1.1
UTF-8
false
null
These are parameters that can impact the process of request execution:
ProtocolVersion
. If this parameter is not set HTTP/1.1 will be used.java.lang.String
. If this parameter is not set US-ASCII
will be used.java.lang.String
. If this parameter is not set ISO-8859-1
will be used.User-Agent
header. This parameter expects a value of type java.lang.String
. If this parameter is not set, HttpClient will automatically generate a value for it.Transfer-Encoding
header should be rejected. This parameter expects a value of type java.lang.Boolean
. If this parameter is not set invalid Transfer-Encoding
values will be ignored.Expect: 100-Continue
handshake for the entity enclosing methods. The purpose of the Expect: 100-Continue
handshake is to allow the client that is sending a request message with a request body to determine if the origin server is willing to accept the request (based on the request headers) before the client sends the request body. The use of the Expect: 100-continue
handshake can result in a noticeable performance improvement for entity enclosing requests (such as POST
and PUT
) that require the target server’s authentication. Expect: 100-continue
handshake should be used with caution, as it may cause problems with HTTP servers and proxies that do not support HTTP/1.1 protocol. This parameter expects a value of type java.lang.Boolean
. If this parameter is not set HttpClient will attempt to use the handshake.100-continue
response. This parameter expects a value of type java.lang.Integer
. If this parameter is not set HttpClient will wait 3 seconds for a confirmation before resuming the transmission of the request body.HttpClient has a complete control over the process of connection initialization and termination as well as I/O operations on active connections. However various aspects of connection operations can be controlled using a number of parameters.
These are parameters that can influence connection operations:
SO_TIMEOUT
) in milliseconds, which is the timeout for waiting for data or, put differently, a maximum period inactivity between two consecutive data packets). A timeout value of zero is interpreted as an infinite timeout. This parameter expects a value of type java.lang.Integer
. If this parameter is not set read operations will not time out (infinite timeout).‘http.tcp.nodelay’: determines whether Nagle’s algorithm is to be used. The Nagle’s algorithm tries to conserve bandwidth by minimizing the number of segments that are sent. When applications wish to decrease network latency and increase performance, they can disable Nagle’s algorithm (that is enable TCP_NODELAY
. Data will be sent earlier, at the cost of an increase in bandwidth consumption. This parameter expects a value of type java.lang.Boolean
. If this parameter is not, TCP_NODELAY
will be enabled (no delay).‘http.socket.buffer-size’: determines the size of the internal socket buffer used to buffer data while receiving / transmitting HTTP messages. This parameter expects a value of type java.lang.Integer
. If this parameter is not set HttpClient will allocate 8192 byte socket buffers.‘http.socket.linger’: sets SO_LINGER
with the specified linger time in seconds. The maximum timeout value is platform specific. Value 0 implies that the option is disabled. Value -1 implies that the JRE default is used. The setting only affects the socket close operation. If this parameter is not set value -1 (JRE default) will be assumed.‘http.connection.timeout’: determines the timeout in milliseconds until a connection is established. A timeout value of zero is interpreted as an infinite timeout. This parameter expects a value of type java.lang.Integer
. If this parameter is not set connect operations will not time out (infinite timeout).‘http.connection.stalecheck’: determines whether stale connection check is to be used. Disabling stale connection check may result in a noticeable performance improvement (the check can cause up to 30 millisecond overhead per request) at the risk of getting an I/O error when executing a request over a connection that has been closed at the server side. This parameter expects a value of type java.lang.Boolean
. For performance critical operations the check should be disabled. If this parameter is not set the stale connection will be performed before each request execution.‘http.connection.max-line-length’: determines the maximum line length limit. If set to a positive value, any HTTP line exceeding this limit will cause an java.io.IOException
. A negative or zero value will effectively disable the check. This parameter expects a value of type java.lang.Integer
. If this parameter is not set, no limit will be enforced.‘http.connection.max-header-count’: determines the maximum HTTP header count allowed. If set to a positive value, the number of HTTP headers received from the data stream exceeding this limit will cause an java.io.IOException
. A negative or zero value will effectively disable the check. This parameter expects a value of type java.lang.Integer
. If this parameter is not set, no limit will be enforced.‘http.connection.max-status-line-garbage’: defines the maximum number of ignorable lines before we expect a HTTP response’s status line. With HTTP/1.1 persistent connections, the problem arises that broken scripts could return a wrong Content-Length
(there are more bytes sent than specified). Unfortunately, in some cases, this cannot be detected after the bad response, but only before the next one. So HttpClient must be able to skip those surplus lines this way. This parameter expects a value of type java.lang.Integer. 0 disallows all garbage/empty lines before the status line. Use java.lang.Integer#MAX_VALUE
for unlimited number. If this parameter is not set unlimited number will be assumed.The process of establishing a connection from one host to another is quite complex and involves multiple packet exchanges between two endpoints, which can be quite time consuming. The overhead of connection handshaking can be significant, especially for small HTTP messages. One can achieve a much higher data throughput if open connections can be re-used to execute multiple requests.
HTTP/1.1 states that HTTP connections can be re-used for multiple requests per default. HTTP/1.0 compliant endpoints can also use similar mechanism to explicitly communicate their preference to keep connection alive and use it for multiple requests. HTTP agents can also keep idle connections alive for a certain period time in case a connection to the same target host may be needed for subsequent requests. The ability to keep connections alive is usually refered to as connection persistence. HttpClient fully supports connection persistence.
HttpClient is capable of establishing connections to the target host either directly or via a route that may involve multiple intermediate connections also referred to as hops. HttpClient differentiates connections of a route into plain, tunneled and layered. The use of multiple intermediate proxies to tunnel connections to the target host is referred to as proxy chaining.
Plain routes are established by connecting to the target or the first and only proxy. Tunnelled routes are established by connecting to the first and tunnelling through a chain of proxies to the target. Routes without a proxy cannot be tunnelled. Layered routes are established by layering a protocol over an existing connection. Protocols can only be layered over a tunnel to the target, or over a direct connection without proxies.
RouteInfo
interface represents information about a definitive route to a target host involving one or more intermediate steps or hops. HttpRoute
is a concrete implementation of RouteInfo
, which cannot be changed (is immutable). HttpTracker
is a mutable RouteInfo
implementation used internally by HttpClient to track the remaining hops to the ultimate route target. HttpTracker
can be updated after a successful execution of the next hop towards the route target. HttpRouteDirector
is a helper class that can be used to compute the next step in a route. This class is used internally by HttpClient.
HttpRoutePlanner
is an interface representing a strategy to compute a complete route to a given target based on the execution context. HttpClient ships with two default HttpRoutePlanner
implementation. ProxySelectorRoutePlanner
is based on java.net.ProxySelector
. By default, it will pick up the proxy settings of the JVM, either from system properties or from the browser running the application. DefaultHttpRoutePlanner
implementation does not make use of any Java system properties, nor of system or browser proxy settings. It computes routes based exclusively on HTTP parameters described below.
HTTP connections can be considered secure if information transmitted between two connection endpoints cannot be read or tampered with by an unauthorized third party. The SSL/TLS protocol is the most widely used technique to ensure HTTP transport security. However, other encryption techniques could be employed as well. Usually, HTTP transport is layered over the SSL/TLS encrypted connection.
These are parameters that can influence route computation:
HttpHost
. If this parameter is not set direct connections to the target will be attempted.java.net.InetAddress
. If this parameter is not set a default local address will be used automatically.HttpRoute
.HTTP connections make use of a java.net.Socket
object internally to handle transmission of data across the wire. They, however, rely on SocketFactory
interface to create, initialize and connect sockets. This enables the users of HttpClient to provide application specific socket initialization code at runtime. PlainSocketFactory
is the default factory for creating and initializing plain (unencrypted) sockets.
The process of creating a socket and that of connecting it to a host are decoupled, so that the socket could be closed while being blocked in the connect operation.
PlainSocketFactory sf = PlainSocketFactory.getSocketFactory();
Socket socket = sf.createSocket();
HttpParams params = new BasicHttpParams();
params.setParameter(CoreConnectionPNames.CONNECTION_TIMEOUT, 1000L);
sf.connectSocket(socket, "locahost", 8080, null, -1, params);
ocketFactory
is an extension of SocketFactory
interface. Layered socket factories are capable of creating sockets that are layered over an existing plain socket. Socket layering is used primarily for creating secure sockets through proxies. HttpClient ships with SSLSocketFactory that implements SSL/TLS layering. Please note HttpClient does not use any custom encryption functionality. It is fully reliant on standard Java Cryptography (JCE) and Secure Sockets (JSEE) extensions.
HttpClient makes use of SSLSocketFactory to create SSL connections. SSLSocketFactory
allows for a high degree of customization. It can take an instance of javax.net.ssl.SSLContext
as a parameter and use it to create custom configured SSL connections.
TrustManager easyTrustManager = new X509TrustManager() {
@Override
public void checkClientTrusted(
X509Certificate[] chain,
String authType) throws CertificateException {
// Oh, I am easy!
}
@Override
public void checkServerTrusted(
X509Certificate[] chain,
String authType) throws CertificateException {
// Oh, I am easy!
}
@Override
public X509Certificate[] getAcceptedIssuers() {
return null;
}
};
SSLContext sslcontext = SSLContext.getInstance("TLS");
sslcontext.init(null, new TrustManager[] { easyTrustManager }, null);
SSLSocketFactory sf = new SSLSocketFactory(sslcontext);
SSLSocket socket = (SSLSocket) sf.createSocket();
socket.setEnabledCipherSuites(new String[] { "SSL_RSA_WITH_RC4_128_MD5" });
HttpParams params = new BasicHttpParams();
params.setParameter(CoreConnectionPNames.CONNECTION_TIMEOUT, 1000L);
sf.connectSocket(socket, "locahost", 443, null, -1, params);
Customization of SSLSocketFactory implies a certain degree of familiarity with the concepts of the SSL/TLS protocol, a detailed explanation of which is out of scope for this document. Please refer to the Java Secure Socket Extension for a detailed description of javax.net.ssl.SSLContext
and related tools.
In addition to the trust verification and the client authentication performed on the SSL/TLS protocol level, HttpClient can optionally verify whether the target hostname matches the names stored inside the server’s X.509 certificate, once the connection has been established. This verification can provide additional guarantees of authenticity of the server trust material. X509HostnameVerifier interface represents a strategy for hostname verification. HttpClient ships with three X509HostnameVerifier. Important: hostname verification should not be confused with SSL trust verification.
StrictHostnameVerifier
: The strict hostname verifier works the same way as Sun Java 1.4, Sun Java 5, Sun Java 6. It’s also pretty close to IE6. This implementation appears to be compliant with RFC 2818 for dealing with wildcards. The hostname must match either the first CN, or any of the subject-alts. A wildcard can occur in the CN, and in any of the subject-alts.BrowserCompatHostnameVerifier
: The hostname verifier that works the same way as Curl and Firefox. The hostname must match either the first CN, or any of the subject-alts. A wildcard can occur in the CN, and in any of the subject-alts. The only difference between BrowserCompatHostnameVerifier
and StrictHostnameVerifier
is that a wildcard (such as “*.foo.com”) with BrowserCompatHostnameVerifier
matches all subdomains, including “a.b.foo.com”.AllowAllHostnameVerifier
: This hostname verifier essentially turns hostname verification off. This implementation is a no-op, and never throws the javax.net.ssl.SSLException
.Per default HttpClient uses BrowserCompatHostnameVerifier
implementation. One can specify a different hostname verifier implementation if desired
SSLSocketFactory sf = new SSLSocketFactory(SSLContext.getInstance("TLS"));
sf.setHostnameVerifier(SSLSocketFactory.STRICT_HOSTNAME_VERIFIER);
Scheme
class represents a protocol scheme such as “http” or “https” and contains a number of protocol properties such as the default port and the socket factory to be used to creating java.net.Socket
instances for the given protocol. SchemeRegistry
class is used to maintain a set of Scheme
s HttpClient can choose from when trying to establish a connection by a request URI:
Scheme http = new Scheme("http", PlainSocketFactory.getSocketFactory(), 80);
SSLSocketFactory sf = new SSLSocketFactory(SSLContext.getInstance("TLS"));
sf.setHostnameVerifier(SSLSocketFactory.STRICT_HOSTNAME_VERIFIER);
Scheme https = new Scheme("https", sf, 443);
SchemeRegistry sr = new SchemeRegistry();
sr.register(http);
sr.register(https);
Even though HttpClient is aware of complex routing scemes and proxy chaining, it supports only simple direct or one hop proxy connections out of the box.
The simplest way to tell HttpClient to connect to the target host via a proxy is by setting the default proxy parameter:
DefaultHttpClient httpclient = new DefaultHttpClient();
HttpHost proxy = new HttpHost("someproxy", 8080);
httpclient.getParams().setParameter(ConnRoutePNames.DEFAULT_PROXY, proxy);
One can also instruct HttpClient to use standard JRE proxy selector to obtain proxy information:
DefaultHttpClient httpclient = new DefaultHttpClient();
ProxySelectorRoutePlanner routePlanner = new ProxySelectorRoutePlanner(
httpclient.getConnectionManager().getSchemeRegistry(),
ProxySelector.getDefault());
httpclient.setRoutePlanner(routePlanner);
Alternatively, one can provide a custom RoutePlanner
implementation in order to have a complete control over the process of HTTP route computation:
DefaultHttpClient httpclient = new DefaultHttpClient();
httpclient.setRoutePlanner(new HttpRoutePlanner() {
public HttpRoute determineRoute(
HttpHost target,
HttpRequest request,
HttpContext context) throws HttpException {
return new HttpRoute(target, null, new HttpHost("someproxy", 8080),
"https".equalsIgnoreCase(target.getSchemeName()));
}
});
Operated connections are client side connections whose underlying socket or its state can be manipulated by an external entity, usually referred to as a connection operator. OperatedClientConnection
interface extends HttpClientConnection
interface and define additional methods to manage connection socket. The ClientConnectionOperator
interface represents a strategy for creating OperatedClientConnection
instances and updating the underlying socket of those objects. Implementations will most likely make use SocketFactory
s to create java.net.Socket
instances. The ClientConnectionOperator
interface enables the users of HttpClient to provide a custom strategy for connection operators as well as an ability to provide alternative implementation of the OperatedClientConnection
interface.
HTTP connections are complex, stateful, thread-unsafe objects which need to be properly managed to function correctly. HTTP connections can only be used by one execution thread at a time. HttpClient employs a special entity to manage access to HTTP connections called HTTP connection manager and represented by the ClientConnectionManager
interface. The purpose of an HTTP connection manager is to serve as a factory for new HTTP connections, manage persistent connections and synchronize access to persistent connections making sure that only one thread can have access to a connection at a time.
Internally HTTP connection managers work with instances of OperatedClientConnection
, but they hands out instances of ManagedClientConnection
to the service consumers. ManagedClientConnection
acts as a wrapper for a OperatedClientConnection
instance that manages its state and controls all I/O operations on that connection. It also abstracts away socket operations and provides convenience methods for opening and updating sockets in order to establish a route. ManagedClientConnection
instances are aware of their link to the connection manager that spawned them and of the fact that they must be returned back to the manager when no longer in use. ManagedClientConnection
classes also implement ConnectionReleaseTrigger
interface that can be used to trigger the release of the connection back to the manager. Once the connection release has been triggered the wrapped connection gets detached from the ManagedClientConnection
wrapper and the OperatedClientConnection
instance is returned back to the manager. Even though the service consumer still holds a reference to the ManagedClientConnection
instance, it is no longer able to execute any I/O operation or change the state of the OperatedClientConnection
either intentionally or unintentionally.
This is an example of acquiring a connection from a connection manager:
HttpParams params = new BasicHttpParams();
Scheme http = new Scheme("http", PlainSocketFactory.getSocketFactory(), 80);
SchemeRegistry sr = new SchemeRegistry();
sr.register(http);
ClientConnectionManager connMrg = new SingleClientConnManager(params, sr);
// Request new connection. This can be a long process
ClientConnectionRequest connRequest = connMrg.requestConnection(
new HttpRoute(new HttpHost("localhost", 80)), null);
// Wait for connection up to 10 sec
ManagedClientConnection conn = connRequest.getConnection(10, TimeUnit.SECONDS);
try {
// Do useful things with the connection.
// Release it when done.
conn.releaseConnection();
} catch (IOException ex) {
// Abort connection upon an I/O error.
conn.abortConnection();
throw ex;
}
The connection request can be terminated prematurely by calling ClientConnectionRequest#abortRequest()
if necessary. This will unblock the thread blocked in the ClientConnectionRequest#getConnection()
method.
BasicManagedEntity
wrapper class can be used to ensure automatic release of the underlying connection once the response content has been fully consumed. HttpClient uses this mechanism internally to achieve transparent connection release for all responses obtained from HttpClient#execute()
methods:
ClientConnectionRequest connRequest = connMrg.requestConnection(
new HttpRoute(new HttpHost("localhost", 80)), null);
ManagedClientConnection conn = connRequest.getConnection(10, TimeUnit.SECONDS);
try {
BasicHttpRequest request = new BasicHttpRequest("GET", "/");
conn.sendRequestHeader(request);
HttpResponse response = conn.receiveResponseHeader();
conn.receiveResponseEntity(response);
HttpEntity entity = response.getEntity();
if (entity != null) {
BasicManagedEntity managedEntity = new BasicManagedEntity(entity, conn, true);
// Replace entity
response.setEntity(managedEntity);
}
// Do something useful with the response
// The connection will be released automatically
// as soon as the response content has been consumed
} catch (IOException ex) {
// Abort connection upon an I/O error.
conn.abortConnection();
throw ex;
}
SingleClientConnManager
is a simple connection manager that maintains only one connection at a time. Even though this class is thread-safe it ought to be used by one execution thread only. SingleClientConnManager
will make an effort to reuse the connection for subsequent requests with the same route. It will, however, close the existing connection and open it for the given route, if the route of the persistent connection does not match that of the connection request. If the connection has been already been allocated java.lang.IllegalStateException
is thrown.
SingleClientConnManager
is used by HttpClient per default.
ThreadSafeClientConnManager
is a more complex implementation that manages a pool of client connections and is able to service connection requests from multiple execution threads. Connections are pooled on a per route basis. A request for a route which already the manager has persistent connections for available in the pool will be services by leasing a connection from the pool rather than creating a brand new connection.
ThreadSafeClientConnManager
maintains a maximum limit of connection on a per route basis and in total. Per default this implementation will create no more than than 2 concurrent connections per given route and no more 20 connections in total. For many real-world applications these limits may prove too constraining, especially if they use HTTP as a transport protocol for their services. Connection limits, however, can be adjusted using HTTP parameters.
This example shows how the connection pool parameters can be adjusted:
HttpParams params = new BasicHttpParams();
// Increase max total connection to 200
ConnManagerParams.setMaxTotalConnections(params, 200);
// Increase default max connection per route to 20
ConnPerRouteBean connPerRoute = new ConnPerRouteBean(20);
// Increase max connections for localhost:80 to 50
HttpHost localhost = new HttpHost("locahost", 80);
connPerRoute.setMaxForRoute(new HttpRoute(localhost), 50);
ConnManagerParams.setMaxConnectionsPerRoute(params, connPerRoute);
SchemeRegistry schemeRegistry = new SchemeRegistry();
schemeRegistry.register(
new Scheme("http", PlainSocketFactory.getSocketFactory(), 80));
schemeRegistry.register(
new Scheme("https", SSLSocketFactory.getSocketFactory(), 443));
ClientConnectionManager cm = new ThreadSafeClientConnManager(params, schemeRegistry);
HttpClient httpClient = new DefaultHttpClient(cm, params);
When an HttpClient instance is no longer needed and is about to go out of scope it is important to shut down its connection manager to ensure that all connections kept alive by the manager get closed and system resources allocated by those connections are released.
DefaultHttpClient httpclient = new DefaultHttpClient();
HttpGet httpget = new HttpGet("http://www.google.com/");
HttpResponse response = httpclient.execute(httpget);
HttpEntity entity = response.getEntity();
System.out.println(response.getStatusLine());
if (entity != null) {
entity.consumeContent();
}
httpclient.getConnectionManager().shutdown();
These are parameters that be used to customize standard HTTP connection manager implementations:
ManagedClientConnection
from the ClientConnectionManager
This parameter expects a value of type java.lang.Long
. If this parameter is not set connection requests will not time out (infinite timeout).ConnPerRoute
.java.lang.Integer
.When equipped with a pooling connection manager such as ThreadSafeClientConnManager HttpClient can be used to execute multiple requests simultaneously using multiple threads of execution.
ThreadSafeClientConnManager
will allocate connections based on its configuration. If all connections for a given route have already been leased, a request for connection will block until a connection is released back to the pool. One can ensure the connection manager does not block indefinitely in the connection request operation by setting 'http.conn-manager.timeout'
to a positive value. If the connection request cannot be serviced within the given time period ConnectionPoolTimeoutException
will be thrown.
HttpParams params = new BasicHttpParams();
SchemeRegistry schemeRegistry = new SchemeRegistry();
schemeRegistry.register(
new Scheme("http", PlainSocketFactory.getSocketFactory(), 80));
ClientConnectionManager cm = new ThreadSafeClientConnManager(params, schemeRegistry);
HttpClient httpClient = new DefaultHttpClient(cm, params);
// URIs to perform GETs on
String[] urisToGet = {
"http://www.domain1.com/",
"http://www.domain2.com/",
"http://www.domain3.com/",
"http://www.domain4.com/"
};
// create a thread for each URI
GetThread[] threads = new GetThread[urisToGet.length];
for (int i = 0; i < threads.length; i++) {
HttpGet httpget = new HttpGet(urisToGet[i]);
threads[i] = new GetThread(httpClient, httpget);
}
// start the threads
for (int j = 0; j < threads.length; j++) {
threads[j].start();
}
// join the threads
for (int j = 0; j < threads.length; j++) {
threads[j].join();
}
static class GetThread extends Thread {
private final HttpClient httpClient;
private final HttpContext context;
private final HttpGet httpget;
public GetThread(HttpClient httpClient, HttpGet httpget) {
this.httpClient = httpClient;
this.context = new BasicHttpContext();
this.httpget = httpget;
}
@Override
public void run() {
try {
HttpResponse response = this.httpClient.execute(this.httpget, this.context);
HttpEntity entity = response.getEntity();
if (entity != null) {
// do something useful with the entity
// ...
// ensure the connection gets released to the manager
entity.consumeContent();
}
} catch (Exception ex) {
this.httpget.abort();
}
}
}
One of the major shortcoming of the classic blocking I/O model is that the network socket can react to I/O events only when blocked in an I/O operation. When a connection is released back to the manager, it can be kept alive however it is unable to monitor the status of the socket and react to any I/O events. If the connection gets closed on the server side, the client side connection is unable to detect the change in the connection state and react appropriately by closing the socket on its end.
HttpClient tries to mitigate the problem by testing whether the connection is ’stale’, that is no longer valid because it was closed on the server side, prior to using the connection for executing an HTTP request. The stale connection check is not 100% reliable and adds 10 to 30 ms overhead to each request execution. The only feasible solution that does not involve a one thread per socket model for idle connections is a dedicated monitor thread used to evict connections that are considered expired due to a long period of inactivity. The monitor thread can periodically call ClientConnectionManager#closeExpiredConnections()
method to close all expired connections and evict closed connections from the pool. It can also optionally call ClientConnectionManager#closeIdleConnections()
method to close all connections that have been idle over a given period of time.
public static class IdleConnectionMonitorThread extends Thread {
private final ClientConnectionManager connMgr;
private volatile boolean shutdown;
public IdleConnectionMonitorThread(ClientConnectionManager connMgr) {
super();
this.connMgr = connMgr;
}
@Override
public void run() {
try {
while (!shutdown) {
synchronized (this) {
wait(5000);
// Close expired connections
connMgr.closeExpiredConnections();
// Optionally, close connections
// that have been idle longer than 30 sec
connMgr.closeIdleConnections(30, TimeUnit.SECONDS);
}
}
} catch (InterruptedException ex) {
// terminate
}
}
public void shutdown() {
shutdown = true;
synchronized (this) {
notifyAll();
}
}
}
The HTTP specification does not specify how long a persistent connection may be and should be kept alive. Some HTTP servers use non-standard Keep-Alive
header to communicate to the client the period of time in seconds they intend to keep the connection alive on the server side. HttpClient makes use of this information if available. If the Keep-Alive
header is not present in the response, HttpClient assumes the connection can be kept alive indefinitely. However, many HTTP servers out there are configured to drop persistent connections after a certain period of inactivity in order to conserve system resources, quite often without informing the client. In case the default strategy turns out to be too optimistic, one may want to provide a custom keep-alive strategy.
DefaultHttpClient httpclient = new DefaultHttpClient();
httpclient.setKeepAliveStrategy(new ConnectionKeepAliveStrategy() {
public long getKeepAliveDuration(HttpResponse response, HttpContext context) {
// Honor 'keep-alive' header
HeaderElementIterator it = new BasicHeaderElementIterator(
response.headerIterator(HTTP.CONN_KEEP_ALIVE));
while (it.hasNext()) {
HeaderElement he = it.nextElement();
String param = he.getName();
String value = he.getValue();
if (value != null && param.equalsIgnoreCase("timeout")) {
try {
return Long.parseLong(value) * 1000;
} catch(NumberFormatException ignore) {
}
}
}
HttpHost target = (HttpHost) context.getAttribute(
ExecutionContext.HTTP_TARGET_HOST);
if ("www.naughty-server.com".equalsIgnoreCase(target.getHostName())) {
// Keep alive for 5 seconds only
return 5 * 1000;
} else {
// otherwise keep alive for 30 seconds
return 30 * 1000;
}
}
});
Originally HTTP was designed as a stateless, request / response oriented protocol that made no special provisions for stateful sessions spanning across several logically related request / response exchanges. As HTTP protocol grew in popularity and adoption more and more systems began to use it for applications it was never intended for, for instance as a transport for e-commerce applications. Thus, the support for state management became a necessity.
Netscape Communications, at that time a leading developer of web client and server software, implemented support for HTTP state management in their products based on a proprietary specification. Later, Netscape tried to standardise the mechanism by publishing a specification draft. Those efforts contributed to the formal specification defined through the RFC standard track. However, state management in a significant number of applications is still largely based on the Netscape draft and is incompatible with the official specification. All major developers of web browsers felt compelled to retain compatibility with those applications greatly contributing to the fragmentation of standards compliance.
Cookie is a token or short packet of state information that the HTTP agent and the target server can exchange to maintain a session. Netscape engineers used to refer to it as as a “magic cookie” and the name stuck.
HttpClient uses Cookie
interface to represent an abstract cookie token. In its simples form an HTTP cookie is merely a name / value pair. Usually an HTTP cookie also contains a number of attributes such as version, a domain for which is valid, a path that specifies the subset of URLs on the origin server to which this cookie applies, and maximum period of time the cookie is valid for.
SetCookie
interface represents a Set-Cookie
response header sent by the origin server to the HTTP agent in order to maintain a conversational state. SetCookie2
interface extends SetCookie with Set-Cookie2
specific methods.
ClientCookie
interface extends Cookie
interface with additional client specific functionality such ability to retrieve original cookie attributes exactly as they were specified by the origin server. This is important for generating the Cookie
header because some cookie specifications require that the Cookie
header should include certain attributes only if they were specified in the Set-Cookie
or Set-Cookie2
header.
Cookies compatible with Netscape draft specification but non-compliant with the official specification are considered to be of version 0. Standard compliant cookies are expected to have version 1. HttpClient may handle cookies differently depending on the version.
Here is an example of re-creating a Netscape cookie:
BasicClientCookie netscapeCookie = new BasicClientCookie("name", "value");
netscapeCookie.setVersion(0);
netscapeCookie.setDomain(".mycompany.com");
netscapeCookie.setPath("/");
Here is an example of re-creating a standard cookie. Please note that standard compliant cookie must retain all attributes as sent by the origin server:
BasicClientCookie stdCookie = new BasicClientCookie("name", "value");
stdCookie.setVersion(1);
stdCookie.setDomain(".mycompany.com");
stdCookie.setPath("/");
stdCookie.setSecure(true);
// Set attributes EXACTLY as sent by the server
stdCookie.setAttribute(ClientCookie.VERSION_ATTR, "1");
stdCookie.setAttribute(ClientCookie.DOMAIN_ATTR, ".mycompany.com");
Here is an example of re-creating a Set-Cookie2
compliant cookie. Please note that standard compliant cookie must retain all attributes as sent by the origin server:
BasicClientCookie2 stdCookie = new BasicClientCookie2("name", "value");
stdCookie.setVersion(1);
stdCookie.setDomain(".mycompany.com");
stdCookie.setPorts(new int[] {80,8080});
stdCookie.setPath("/");
stdCookie.setSecure(true);
// Set attributes EXACTLY as sent by the server
stdCookie.setAttribute(ClientCookie.VERSION_ATTR, "1");
stdCookie.setAttribute(ClientCookie.DOMAIN_ATTR, ".mycompany.com");
stdCookie.setAttribute(ClientCookie.PORT_ATTR, "80,8080");
CookieSpec
interface represents a cookie management specification. Cookie management specification is expected to enforce:
Set-Cookie
and optionally Set-Cookie2
headers.Cookie
header for a given host, port and path of origin.HttpClient ships with several CookieSpec
implementations:
It is strongly recommended to use the Best Match
policy and let HttpClient pick up an appropriate compliance level at runtime based on the execution context.
These are parameters that be used to customize HTTP state management and behaviour of individual cookie specifications:
expires
attribute. Only required for compatibility with non-compliant servers that still use expires
defined in the Netscape draft instead of the standard max-age
attribute. This parameter expects a value of type java.util.Collection
. The collection elements must be of type java.lang.String
compatible with the syntax of java.text.SimpleDateFormat
. If this parameter is not set the choice of a default value is CookieSpec
implementation specific. Please note this parameter appliesCookie
request header. Otherwise, each cookie is formatted as a separate Cookie
header. This parameter expects a value of type java.lang.Boolean
. If this parameter is not set the choice of a default value is CookieSpec implementation specific. Please note this parameter applies to strict cookie specifications (RFC 2109 and RFC 2965) only. Browser compatibility and netscape draft policies will always put all cookies into one request header.java.lang.String
. If this parameter is not set valid date patterns are CookieSpec
implementation specific.HttpClient maintains a registry of available cookie specifications using CookieSpecRegistry
class. The following specifications are registered per default:
Cookie policy can be set at the HTTP client and overridden on the HTTP request level if required.
HttpClient httpclient = new DefaultHttpClient();
// force strict cookie policy per default
httpclient.getParams().setParameter(
ClientPNames.COOKIE_POLICY, CookiePolicy.RFC_2965);
HttpGet httpget = new HttpGet("http://www.broken-server.com/");
// Override the default policy for this request
httpget.getParams().setParameter(
ClientPNames.COOKIE_POLICY, CookiePolicy.BROWSER_COMPATIBILITY);
In order to implement a custom cookie policy one should create a custom implementation of CookieSpec
interface, create a CookieSpecFactory
implementation to create and initialize instances of the custom specification and register the factory with HttpClient. Once the custom specification has been registered, it can be activated the same way as the standard cookie specifications.
CookieSpecFactory csf = new CookieSpecFactory() {
public CookieSpec newInstance(HttpParams params) {
return new BrowserCompatSpec() {
@Override
public void validate(Cookie cookie, CookieOrigin origin)
throws MalformedCookieException {
// Oh, I am easy
}
};
}
};
DefaultHttpClient httpclient = new DefaultHttpClient();
httpclient.getCookieSpecs().register("easy", csf);
httpclient.getParams().setParameter(
ClientPNames.COOKIE_POLICY, "easy");
HttpClient can work with any physical representation of a persistent cookie store that implements the CookieStore
interface. The default CookieStore
implementation called BasicClientCookie
is a simple implementation backed by a java.util.ArrayList
. Cookies stored in an BasicClientCookie
object are lost when the container object get garbage collected. Users can provide more complex implementations if necessary.
DefaultHttpClient httpclient = new DefaultHttpClient();
// Create a local instance of cookie store
CookieStore cookieStore = new MyCookieStore();
// Populate cookies if needed
BasicClientCookie cookie = new BasicClientCookie("name", "value");
cookie.setVersion(0);
cookie.setDomain(".mycompany.com");
cookie.setPath("/");
cookieStore.addCookie(cookie);
// Set the store
httpclient.setCookieStore(cookieStore);
In the course of HTTP request execution HttpClient adds the following state management related objects to the execution context:
CookieSpecRegistry
instance representing the actual cookie specification registry. The value of this attribute set in the local context takes precedence over the default one.CookieSpec
instance representing the actual cookie specification.CookieOrigin
instance representing the actual details of the origin server.CookieStore
instance represents the actual cookie store. The value of this attribute set in the local context takes precedence over the default one.The local HttpContext
object can be used to customize the HTTP state management context prior to request execution or examine its state after the request has been executed:
HttpClient httpclient = new DefaultHttpClient();
HttpContext localContext = new BasicHttpContext();
HttpGet httpget = new HttpGet("http://localhost:8080/");
HttpResponse response = httpclient.execute(httpget, localContext);
CookieOrigin cookieOrigin = (CookieOrigin) localContext.getAttribute(
ClientContext.COOKIE_ORIGIN);
System.out.println("Cookie origin: " + cookieOrigin);
CookieSpec cookieSpec = (CookieSpec) localContext.getAttribute(
ClientContext.COOKIE_SPEC);
System.out.println("Cookie spec used: " + cookieSpec);
One can use an individual local execution context in order to implement per user (or per thread) state management. Cookie specification registry and cookie store defined in the local context will take precedence over the default ones set at the HTTP client level.
HttpClient httpclient = new DefaultHttpClient();
// Create a local instance of cookie store
CookieStore cookieStore = new BasicCookieStore();
// Create local HTTP context
HttpContext localContext = new BasicHttpContext();
// Bind custom cookie store to the local context
localContext.setAttribute(ClientContext.COOKIE_STORE, cookieStore);
HttpGet httpget = new HttpGet("http://www.google.com/");
// Pass local context as a parameter
HttpResponse response = httpclient.execute(httpget, localContext);
HttpClient provides full support for authentication schemes defined by the HTTP standard specification. HttpClient’s authentication framework can also be extended to support non-standard authentication schemes such as NTLM
and SPNEGO
.
Any process of user authentication requires a set of credentials that can be used to establish user identity. In the simplest form user crednetials can be just a user name / password pair. UsernamePasswordCredentials
represents a set of credentials consisting of a security principal and a password in clear text. This implementation is sufficient for standard authentication schemes defined by the HTTP standard specification.
UsernamePasswordCredentials creds = new UsernamePasswordCredentials("user", "pwd");
System.out.println(creds.getUserPrincipal().getName());
System.out.println(creds.getPassword());
stdout >
user
pwd
NTCredentials
is a Microsoft Windows specific implementation that includes in addition to the user name / password pair a set of additional Windows specific attributes such as a name of the user domain, as in Microsoft Windows network the same user can belong to multiple domains with a different set of authorizations.
NTCredentials creds = new NTCredentials("user", "pwd", "workstation", "domain");
System.out.println(creds.getUserPrincipal().getName());
System.out.println(creds.getPassword());
stdout >
DOMAIN/user
pwd
The AuthScheme
interface represents an abstract challenge-response oriented authentication scheme. An authentication scheme is expected to support the following functions:
Please note authentication schemes may be stateful involving a series of challenge-response exchanges.
HttpClient ships with several AuthScheme
implementations:
NTLM_SUPPORT.txt
document included with HttpClient distributions.These are parameters that be used to customize HTTP authentication process and behaviour of individual authentication schemes:
java.lang.Boolean
. If this parameter is not set HttpClient will handle authentication automatically.java.lang.String
. If this parameter is not set US-ASCII
will be used.HttpClient maintains a registry of available authentication scheme using AuthSchemeRegistry
class. The following schemes are registered per default:
Please note NTLM
scheme is NOT registered per default. The NTLM
cannot be enabled per default due to licensing and legal reasons. For details on how to enable NTLM
support please see this section.
Credentials providers are intended to maintain a set of user credentials and to be able to produce user credentials for a particular authentication scope. Authentication scope consists of a host name, a port number, a realm name and an authentication scheme name. When registering credentials with the credentials provider one can provide a wild card (any host, any port, any realm, any scheme) instead of a concrete attribute value. The credentials provider is then expected to be able to find the closest match for a particular scope if the direct match cannot be found.
HttpClient can work with any physical representation of a credentials provider that implements the CredentialsProvider
interface. The default CredentialsProvider
implementation called BasicCredentialsProvider
is a simple implementation backed by a java.util.HashMap
.
CredentialsProvider credsProvider = new BasicCredentialsProvider();
credsProvider.setCredentials(
new AuthScope("somehost", AuthScope.ANY_PORT),
new UsernamePasswordCredentials("u1", "p1"));
credsProvider.setCredentials(
new AuthScope("somehost", 8080),
new UsernamePasswordCredentials("u2", "p2"));
credsProvider.setCredentials(
new AuthScope("otherhost", 8080, AuthScope.ANY_REALM, "ntlm"),
new UsernamePasswordCredentials("u3", "p3"));
System.out.println(credsProvider.getCredentials(
new AuthScope("somehost", 80, "realm", "basic")));
System.out.println(credsProvider.getCredentials(
new AuthScope("somehost", 8080, "realm", "basic")));
System.out.println(credsProvider.getCredentials(
new AuthScope("otherhost", 8080, "realm", "basic")));
System.out.println(credsProvider.getCredentials(
new AuthScope("otherhost", 8080, null, "ntlm")));
stdout >
[principal: u1]
[principal: u2]
null
[principal: u3]
HttpClient relies on the AuthState
class to keep track of detailed information about the state of the authentication process. HttpClient creates two instances ofAuthState
in the course of HTTP request execution: one for target host authentication and another one for proxy authentication. In case the target server or the proxy require user authentication the respective AuthScope
instance will be populated with the AuthScope
, AuthScheme
and Crednetials
used during the authentication process. The AuthState
can be examined in order to find out what kind of authentication was requested, whether a matching AuthScheme
implementation was found and whether the credentials provider managed to find user credentials for the given authentication scope.
In the course of HTTP request execution HttpClient adds the following authentication related objects to the execution context:
AuthSchemeRegistry
instance representing the actual authentication scheme registry. The value of this attribute set in the local context takes precedence over the default one.CookieSpec
instance representing the actual credentials provider. The value of this attribute set in the local context takes precedence over the default one.AuthState
instance representing the actual target authentication state. The value of this attribute set in the local context takes precedence over the default one.AuthState
instance representing the actual proxy authentication state. The value of this attribute set in the local context takes precedence over the default one.The local HttpContext
object can be used to customize the HTTP authentication context prior to request execution or examine its state after the request has been executed:
HttpClient httpclient = new DefaultHttpClient();
HttpContext localContext = new BasicHttpContext();
HttpGet httpget = new HttpGet("http://localhost:8080/");
HttpResponse response = httpclient.execute(httpget, localContext);
AuthState proxyAuthState = (AuthState) localContext.getAttribute(
ClientContext.PROXY_AUTH_STATE);
System.out.println("Proxy auth scope: " + proxyAuthState.getAuthScope());
System.out.println("Proxy auth scheme: " + proxyAuthState.getAuthScheme());
System.out.println("Proxy auth credentials: " + proxyAuthState.getCredentials());
AuthState targetAuthState = (AuthState) localContext.getAttribute(
ClientContext.TARGET_AUTH_STATE);
System.out.println("Target auth scope: " + targetAuthState.getAuthScope());
System.out.println("Target auth scheme: " + targetAuthState.getAuthScheme());
System.out.println("Target auth credentials: " + targetAuthState.getCredentials());
HttpClient does not support preemptive authentication out of the box, because if misused or used incorrectly the preemptive authentication can lead to significant security issues, such as sending user credentials in clear text to an unauthorized third party. Therefore, users are expected to evaluate potential benefits of preemptive authentication versus security risks in the context of their specific application environment and are required to add support for preemptive authentication using standard HttpClient extension mechanisms such as protocol interceptors.
This is an example of a simple protocol interceptor that preemptively introduces an instance of BasicScheme
to the execution context, if no authentication has been attempted yet. Please note that this interceptor must be added to the protocol processing chain before the standard authentication interceptors.
HttpRequestInterceptor preemptiveAuth = new HttpRequestInterceptor() {
public void process(
final HttpRequest request,
final HttpContext context) throws HttpException, IOException {
AuthState authState = (AuthState) context.getAttribute(
ClientContext.TARGET_AUTH_STATE);
CredentialsProvider credsProvider = (CredentialsProvider) context.getAttribute(
ClientContext.CREDS_PROVIDER);
HttpHost targetHost = (HttpHost) context.getAttribute(
ExecutionContext.HTTP_TARGET_HOST);
// If not auth scheme has been initialized yet
if (authState.getAuthScheme() == null) {
AuthScope authScope = new AuthScope(
targetHost.getHostName(),
targetHost.getPort());
// Obtain credentials matching the target host
Credentials creds = credsProvider.getCredentials(authScope);
// If found, generate BasicScheme preemptively
if (creds != null) {
authState.setAuthScheme(new BasicScheme());
authState.setCredentials(creds);
}
}
}
};
DefaultHttpClient httpclient = new DefaultHttpClient();
// Add as the very first interceptor in the protocol chain
httpclient.addRequestInterceptor(preemptiveAuth, 0);
Currently HttpClient does not provide support for the NTLM authentication scheme out of the box and probably never will. The reasons for that are legal rather than technical. However, NTLM authentication can be enabled by using an external NTLM
engine such as JCIFS library developed by the Samba project as a part of their Windows interoperability suite of programs. For details please refer to the NTLM_SUPPORT.txt
document included with HttpClient distributions.
NTLM
authentication scheme is significantly more expensive in terms of computational overhead and performance impact than the standard Basic
and Digest
schemes. This is likely to be one of the main reasons why Microsoft chose to make NTLM
authentication scheme stateful. That is, once authenticated, the user identity is associated with that connection for its entire life span. The stateful nature of NTLM
connections makes connection persistence more complex, as for the obvious reason persistent NTLM
connections may not be re-used by users with a different user identity. The standard connection managers shipped with HttpClient are fully capable of managing stateful connections. However, it is critically important that logically related requests within the same session use the same execution context in order to make them aware of the current user identity. Otherwise, HttpClient will end up creating a new HTTP connection for each HTTP request against NTLM
protected resources. For detailed discussion on stateful HTTP connections please refer to this section.
As NTLM
connections are stateful it is generally recommended to trigger NTLM
authentication using a relatively cheap method, such as GET
or HEAD
, and re-use the same connection to execute more expensive methods, especially those enclose a request entity, such as POST
or PUT
.
DefaultHttpClient httpclient = new DefaultHttpClient();
NTCredentials creds = new NTCredentials("user", "pwd", "myworkstation", "microsoft.com");
httpclient.getCredentialsProvider().setCredentials(AuthScope.ANY, creds);
HttpHost target = new HttpHost("www.microsoft.com", 80, "http");
// Make sure the same context is used to execute logically related requests
HttpContext localContext = new BasicHttpContext();
// Execute a cheap method first. This will trigger NTLM authentication
HttpGet httpget = new HttpGet("/ntlm-protected/info");
HttpResponse response1 = httpclient.execute(target, httpget, localContext);
HttpEntity entity1 = response1.getEntity();
if (entity1 != null) {
entity1.consumeContent();
}
// Execute an expensive method next reusing the same context (and connection)
HttpPost httppost = new HttpPost("/ntlm-protected/form");
httppost.setEntity(new StringEntity("lots and lots of data"));
HttpResponse response2 = httpclient.execute(target, httppost, localContext);
HttpEntity entity2 = response2.getEntity();
if (entity2 != null) {
entity2.consumeContent();
}
HttpClient
interface represents the most essential contract for HTTP request execution. It imposes no restrictions or particular details on the request execution process and leaves the specifics of connection management, state management, authentication and redirect handling up to individual implementations. This should make it easier to decorate the interface with additional functionality such as response content caching.
DefaultHttpClient
is the default implementation of the HttpClient
interface. This class acts as a facade to a number of special purpose handler or strategy interface implementations responsible for handling of a particular aspect of the HTTP protocol such as redirect or authentication handling or making decision about connection persistence and keep alive duration. This enables the users to selectively replace default implementation of those aspects with custom, application specific ones.
DefaultHttpClient httpclient = new DefaultHttpClient();
httpclient.setKeepAliveStrategy(new DefaultConnectionKeepAliveStrategy() {
@Override
public long getKeepAliveDuration(
HttpResponse response,
HttpContext context) {
long keepAlive = super.getKeepAliveDuration(response, context);
if (keepAlive == -1) {
// Keep connections alive 5 seconds if a keep-alive value
// has not be explicitly set by the server
keepAlive = 5000;
}
return keepAlive;
}
});
DefaultHttpClient
also maintains a list of protocol interceptors intended for processing outgoing requests and incoming responses and provides methods for managing those interceptors. New protocol interceptors can be introduced to the protocol processor chain or removed from it if needed. Internally protocol interceptors are stored in a simple java.util.ArrayList
. They are executed in the same natural order as they are added to the list.
DefaultHttpClient httpclient = new DefaultHttpClient();
httpclient.removeRequestInterceptorByClass(RequestUserAgent.class);
httpclient.addRequestInterceptor(new HttpRequestInterceptor() {
public void process(
HttpRequest request, HttpContext context)
throws HttpException, IOException {
request.setHeader(HTTP.USER_AGENT, "My-own-client");
}
});
DefaultHttpClient
is thread safe. It is recommended that the same instance of this class is reused for multiple request executions. When an instance of DefaultHttpClient
is no longer needed and is about to go out of scope the connection manager associated with it must be shut down by calling the ClientConnectionManager#shutdown()
method.
HttpClient httpclient = new DefaultHttpClient();
// Do something useful
httpclient.getConnectionManager().shutdown();
These are parameters that be used to customize the behaviour of the default HttpClient implementation:
java.lang.Boolean
. If this parameter is not HttpClient will handle redirects automatically.java.lang.Boolean
. If this parameter is not set relative redirects will be allowed.java.lang.Integer
. If this parameter is not set no more than 100 redirects will be allowed.java.lang.Boolean
. If this parameter is not set circular redirects will be disallowed.ClientConnectionManager
implementation. This parameter expects a value of type java.lang.String
. If this parameter is not set SingleClientConnManager
will be used per default.Host
header instead of the physical host name. This parameter expects a value of type HttpHost
. If this parameter is not set name or IP address of the target host will be used.java.util.Collection
containing Header
objects.HttpHost
.HttpClient handles all types of redirects automatically, except those explicitly prohibited by the HTTP specification as requiring user intervention. See Other
(status code 303) redirects on POST
and PUT
requests are converted to GET
requests as required by the HTTP specification.
The DefaultHttpClient
treats HTTP requests as immutable objects that are never supposed to change in the course of request execution. Instead, it creates a private mutable copy of the original request object, whose properties can be updated depending on the execution context. Therefore the final request properties such as the target host and request URI can be determined by examining the content of the local HTTP context after the request has been executed.
DefaultHttpClient httpclient = new DefaultHttpClient();
HttpContext localContext = new BasicHttpContext();
HttpGet httpget = new HttpGet("http://localhost:8080/");
HttpResponse response = httpclient.execute(httpget, localContext);
HttpHost target = (HttpHost) localContext.getAttribute(
ExecutionContext.HTTP_TARGET_HOST);
HttpUriRequest req = (HttpUriRequest) localContext.getAttribute(
ExecutionContext.HTTP_REQUEST);
System.out.println("Target host: " + target);
System.out.println("Final request URI: " + req.getURI());
System.out.println("Final request method: " + req.getMethod());
In certain situations it may be necessary to customize the way HTTP messages get transmitted across the wire beyond what is possible possible using HTTP parameters in order to be able to deal non-standard, non-compliant behaviours. For instance, for web crawlers it may be necessary to force HttpClient into accepting malformed response heads in order to salvage the content of the messages.
Usually the process of plugging in a custom message parser or a custom connection implementation involves several steps:
LineParser
/ LineFormatter
interface implementation. Implement message parsing / formatting logic as required. class MyLineParser extends BasicLineParser {
@Override
public Header parseHeader(
final CharArrayBuffer buffer) throws ParseException {
try {
return super.parseHeader(buffer);
} catch (ParseException ex) {
// Suppress ParseException exception
return new BasicHeader("invalid", buffer.toString());
}
}
}
OperatedClientConnection
implementation. Replace default request / response parsers, request / response formatters with custom ones as required. Implement different message writing / reading code if necessary. class MyClientConnection extends DefaultClientConnection {
@Override
protected HttpMessageParser createResponseParser(
final SessionInputBuffer buffer,
final HttpResponseFactory responseFactory,
final HttpParams params) {
return new DefaultResponseParser(
buffer,
new MyLineParser(),
responseFactory,
params);
}
}
ClientConnectionOperator
interface implementation in order to create connections of new class. Implement different socket initialization code if necessary. class MyClientConnectionOperator extends DefaultClientConnectionOperator {
public MyClientConnectionOperator(final SchemeRegistry sr) {
super(sr);
}
@Override
public OperatedClientConnection createConnection() {
return new MyClientConnection();
}
}
ClientConnectionManager
interface implementation in order to create connection operator of new class. class MyClientConnManager extends SingleClientConnManager {
public MyClientConnManager(
final HttpParams params,
final SchemeRegistry sr) {
super(params, sr);
}
@Override
protected ClientConnectionOperator createConnectionOperator(
final SchemeRegistry sr) {
return new MyClientConnectionOperator(sr);
}
}
While HTTP specification assumes that session state information is always embedded in HTTP messages in the form of HTTP cookies and therefore HTTP connections are always stateless, this assumption does not always hold true in real life. There are cases when HTTP connections are created with a particular user identity or within a particular security context and therefore cannot be shared with other users and can be reused by the same user only. Examples of such stateful HTTP connections are NTLM
authenticated connections and SSL connections with client certificate authentication.
HttpClient relies on UserTokenHandler
interface to determine if the given execution context is user specific or not. The token object returned by this handler is expected to uniquely identify the current user if the context is user specific or to be null if the context does not contain any resources or details specific to the current user. The user token will be used to ensure that user specific resources will not be shared with or reused by other users.
The default implementation of the UserTokenHandler
interface uses an instance of Principal class to represent a state object for HTTP connections, if it can be obtained from the given execution context. DefaultUserTokenHandler
will use the user principle of connection based authentication schemes such as NTLM
or that of the SSL session with client authentication turned on. If both are unavailable, null token will be returned.
Users can provide a custom implementation if the default one does not satisfy their needs:
DefaultHttpClient httpclient = new DefaultHttpClient();
httpclient.setUserTokenHandler(new UserTokenHandler() {
public Object getUserToken(HttpContext context) {
return context.getAttribute("my-token");
}
});
In the course of HTTP request execution HttpClient adds the following user identity related objects to the execution context:
Principle
interfaceOne can find out whether or not the connection used to execute the request was stateful by examining the content of the local HTTP context after the request has been executed.
DefaultHttpClient httpclient = new DefaultHttpClient();
HttpContext localContext = new BasicHttpContext();
HttpGet httpget = new HttpGet("http://localhost:8080/");
HttpResponse response = httpclient.execute(httpget, localContext);
HttpEntity entity = response.getEntity();
if (entity != null) {
entity.consumeContent();
}
Object userToken = localContext.getAttribute(ClientContext.USER_TOKEN);
System.out.println(userToken);
6.2.2.1. 持续状态的连接
Please note that persistent connection that carry a state object can be reused only if the same state object is bound to the execution context when requests are executed. So, it is really important to ensure the either same context is reused for execution of subsequent HTTP requests by the same user or the user token is bound to the context prior to request execution.
DefaultHttpClient httpclient = new DefaultHttpClient();
HttpContext localContext1 = new BasicHttpContext();
HttpGet httpget1 = new HttpGet("http://localhost:8080/");
HttpResponse response1 = httpclient.execute(httpget1, localContext1);
HttpEntity entity1 = response1.getEntity();
if (entity1 != null) {
entity1.consumeContent();
}
Principal principal = (Principal) localContext1.getAttribute(
ClientContext.USER_TOKEN);
HttpContext localContext2 = new BasicHttpContext();
localContext2.setAttribute(ClientContext.USER_TOKEN, principal);
HttpGet httpget2 = new HttpGet("http://localhost:8080/");
HttpResponse response2 = httpclient.execute(httpget2, localContext2);
HttpEntity entity2 = response2.getEntity();
if (entity2 != null) {
entity2.consumeContent();
}