Java Networking: URL + URLConnection
Jakob Jenkov |
The java.net package contains two interesting classes: The URL class
and the URLConnection class. These classes can be used to create client connections to
web servers (HTTP servers). Here is a simple code example:
URL url = new URL("http://jenkov.com");
URLConnection urlConnection = url.openConnection();
InputStream input = urlConnection.getInputStream();
int data = input.read();
while(data != -1){
System.out.print((char) data);
data = input.read();
}
input.close();
HTTP GET and POST
By default the URLConnection sends an HTTP GET request to the webserver. If you
want to send an HTTP POST request instead, call the URLConnection.setDoOutput(true)
method, like this:
URL url = new URL("http://jenkov.com");
URLConnection urlConnection = url.openConnection();
urlConnection.setDoOutput(true);
Once you have set called setDoOutput(true) you can open the URLConnection's
OutputStream like this:
OutputStream output = urlConnection.getOutputStream();
Using this OutputStream you can write any data you want in the body of the HTTP request.
Remember to URL encode it (search Google for an explanation of URL encoding).
Remember to close the OutputStream when you are done writing data to it.
URLs to Local Files
The URL class can also be used to access files in the local file system.
Thus the URL class can be a handy way to open a file, if you need your
code to not know whether the file came from the network or local file system.
Here is an example of how to open a file in the local file system using the URL
class:
URL url = new URL("file:/c:/data/test.txt");
URLConnection urlConnection = url.openConnection();
InputStream input = urlConnection.getInputStream();
int data = input.read();
while(data != -1){
System.out.print((char) data);
data = input.read();
}
input.close();
Notice how the only difference from accessing a file on a web server via HTTP is the the URL:
"file:/c:/data/test.txt".
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Jakob Jenkov | |
