Package org.apache.commons.httpclient

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

See:
Description

Interface Summary

Credentials	Authentication credentials.
HttpConnectionManager	An interface for classes that manage HttpConnections.
HttpMethod	A request to be applied to an HttpConnection, and a container for the associated response.
HttpUrlMethod	Deprecated. use HttpMethod
MethodRetryHandler	A handler for determining if an HttpMethod should be retried after a recoverable exception during execution.

Class Summary

Authenticator	Deprecated. use HttpAuthenticator
ChunkedInputStream	Transparently coalesces chunks of a HTTP stream that uses Transfer-Encoding chunked.
ChunkedOutputStream	Wrapper supporting the chunked transfer encoding.
ConnectMethod	Wraps another method to tunnel through a proxy.
ContentLengthInputStream	Cuts the wrapped InputStream off after a specified number of bytes.
Cookie	An HTTP "magic-cookie", as specified in RFC 2109.
DefaultMethodRetryHandler	The default MethodRetryHandler used by HttpMethodBase.
Header	An HTTP header.
HeaderElement	One element of an HTTP header's value.
HeaderGroup	A class for combining a set of headers.
HostConfiguration
HttpClient	An HTTP "user-agent", containing an HttpState and one or more HttpConnections, to which HttpMethods can be applied.
HttpConnection	An abstraction of an HTTP InputStream and OutputStream pair, together with the relevant attributes.
HttpConstants	HTTP content conversion routines.
HttpMethodBase	An abstract base implementation of HttpMethod.
HttpParser	A utility class for parsing http header values.
HttpState	A container for HTTP attributes that may persist from request to request, such as Cookies and authentication Credentials.
HttpStatus	Constants enumerating the HTTP status codes.
HttpsURL	The HTTPS URL.
HttpURL	The HTTP URL.
MultiThreadedHttpConnectionManager	Manages a set of HttpConnections for various HostConfigurations.
NameValuePair	A simple class encapsulating a name/value pair.
NTCredentials	Username and password Credentials.
NTLM	Deprecated. this class will be made package access for 2.0beta2
RequestOutputStream	Deprecated. Use new ChunkedOutputStream(HttpConnecion#getRequestOutputStream());
ResponseInputStream	Deprecated. Use new ChunkedInputStream(HttpConnecion#getResponseInputStream());
SimpleHttpConnectionManager	A connection manager that provides access to a single HttpConnection.
StatusLine	Represents a Status-Line as returned from a HTTP server.
URI	The interface for the URI(Uniform Resource Identifiers) version of RFC 2396.
URI.LocaleToCharsetMap	A mapping to determine the (somewhat arbitrarily) preferred charset for a given locale.
UsernamePasswordCredentials	Username and password Credentials.

Exception Summary

HttpException	Signals that an HTTP or HttpClient exception has occurred.
HttpRecoverableException	Signals that an HTTP or HttpClient exception has occurred.
URI.DefaultCharsetChanged	The charset-changed normal operation to represent to be required to alert to user the fact the default charset is changed.
URIException	The URI parsing and escape encoding exception.

Package org.apache.commons.httpclient Description

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

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

The basis for the abstraction is provided by three types:

HttpConnection

represents a network connection to some HTTP host.

HttpMethod

represents a request to be made over some HttpConnection and contains the server's response.

HttpState

contains the HTTP attributes that may persist from request to request, such as cookies and authentication credentials.

and several simple bean-style classes:

Cookie

represents HTTP cookie.

Credentials

an interface representing a set of authentication credentials.

Header

represents an HTTP request or response header.

HeaderElement

represents a single element of a multi-part header.

UsernamePasswordCredentials

a username and password pair.

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

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

HttpMethodBase

an abstract base implementation of HttpMethod, which may be extended to create new method types or to support additional protocol HTTP features.

HttpStatus

an enumeration of HttpStatus codes.

RequestOutputStream

an OutputStream wrapper supporting the "chunked" transfer encoding.

ResponseInputStream

an InputStream wrapper supporting the "chunked" transfer encoding.

URIUtil

provides utilities for encoding and decoding URI's in the %HH format.

HttpClient Configuration with Java Properties

Java properties can be set at run time with the -Dname=value command line arguments to the application that uses HttpClient. These properties can also be set programaticly by calling System.getProperties().setProperty(name, value). This is the list of properties that HttpClient recognizes:

Name	Type	Effect
httpclient.useragent	String	Sets the User-Agent string to be sent on every HTTP request.
httpclient.authentication.preemptive	boolean	Sends authorization credentials without requiring explicit requests from the web server