javaapache-httpclient-4.xapache-commons-httpclient

Deprecated Java HttpClient - How hard can it be?


All I'm trying to do is download some JSON and deserialize it into an object. I haven't got as far as downloading the JSON yet.

Almost every single HttpClient example I can find, including those on the apache site looks something like...

import org.apache.http.client.HttpClient;
import org.apache.http.impl.client.DefaultHttpClient;

public void blah() {
    HttpClient client = new DefaultHttpClient();
    ...
}

However, Netbeans tells me that DefaultHttpClient is deprecated. I've tried googling for DefaultHttpClient deprecated and as many other variations as I can think of and can't find any useful results, so I'm obviously missing something.

What is the correct Java7 way to download the contents of a webpage? Is there really no decent Http Client as part of the language? I find that hard to believe.

My Maven dependency for this is...

<dependency>
    <groupId>org.apache.httpcomponents</groupId>
    <artifactId>httpclient</artifactId>
    <version>LATEST</version>
    <type>jar</type>
</dependency>

Solution

  • Relevant imports:

    import org.apache.http.impl.client.CloseableHttpClient;
    import org.apache.http.impl.client.HttpClientBuilder;
    import java.io.IOException;
    

    Usage:

    HttpClient httpClient = HttpClientBuilder.create().build();
    

    EDIT (after Jules' suggestion):

    As the build() method returns a CloseableHttpClient which is-a AutoClosable, you can place the declaration in a try-with-resources statement (Java 7+):

    try (CloseableHttpClient httpClient = HttpClientBuilder.create().build()) {
    
        // use httpClient (no need to close it explicitly)
    
    } catch (IOException e) {
    
        // handle
    
    }