Steps to add okhttp to existing Java project in Eclipse

I'm old-school and so have always just added jar files to the build path in Eclipse (4.26.0), but I want to modernize. Everything I see talks about maven, so I went into Window > Show View > Other... and selected Maven Repositories, but can't find anything to do there.

Then I tried right-click New > Other...> Maven > Maven Project which directs me to Select and Archetype, but under "All Catalogs", I do not find "okhttp".

I see that https://mvnrepository.com/artifact/com.squareup.okhttp3/okhttp/4.12.0 exists, and that's what I want in my project. I tried "Add Remote Catalog...", but when I put https://mvnrepository.com/maven2/archetype-catalog.xml as the catalog file, it says "Remote catalog is empty", so my guess at what the catalog file xml file name is can't be right. I don't see where on mvnrepository.com they tell me what the catalog xml file URL is.

How can I add okhttp to my Eclipse project? Should I just give up and go back to jar files?

Solution

If you want to switch to maven, it is essentially four steps:

add a pom.xml to your project, at top level
adjust the project's file structure, so the folders / packages for what you declared as groupId/artifactId in the pom.xml
build your project with mvn clean package
(You can later add the exec plugin, to conveniently start after build.)
add the okhttp dependency you are interested in, by adding the xml you see on mvncentral to the pom.xml's dependencies tag.

I'd recommend to use a template hello world project, so you can conveniently start off with something that works, and inspect file structure, find inspiration from... You can create such a sample project with an archetype:

  mvn archetype:generate \
  -DgroupId=com.stackoverflow \
  -DartifactId=MavenHelloWorld \
  -DarchetypeArtifactId=maven-archetype-quickstart \
  -DinteractiveMode=false

(replace com.stackoverflow by whatever reversed domain fits you as a developer / company)

A while ago I've created a "getting started with maven" page for my students, where I explain layout, minimal pom.xml and some off-the-shelf maven configuration building blocks. Might be a good side-read to get started with the project migration.