Testing the new Java 9 HTTP Client API on jShell

Java 9 is feature complete and one of the features is the new HTTP Client library, that will likely replace the existing HttpUrlConnection library. In this post you can read a few tests I made using this library.

The new HTTP API

To support HTTP 1 and 2, the new API brings 4 new main classes as you can see java.net.http package summary:

• HttpClient
• HttpRequest
• HttpResponse
• WebSocket

In this post we will focus ton HttpClient, HttpRequest and HttpResponse. Notice that the code I will show is slightly different from the one you see in the online javadocs  - the API is still in development and it is a subject to change!

Using HttpRequest, HttpResponse and HttpClient on jshell

JShell is awesome, you can run jshell binary that comes with Java 9 and start writing Java code. I recommend this article if you want to know more about it.

However, there's a small problem if you want to use the new API you must add the module java.httpclient. Yes, Java 9 has a modular system and not all modules are imported by default. See in HttpClient javadoc. In top left side you can see the module information. Some modules are not imported by default and you must start jshell with the --add-modules and I have an error when adding java.httpclient. I know it is a specific error for java.httpclient because it works with other modules, like java.logging. I also tried to specify the module path using --module-path  pointing to the jmods directory (because I see java.httpclient module there), but it was unsuccessful.

I found that the reason is the fact that the HttpClient  is on JDK incubator module jdk jdk.incubator.httpclient. The version I am using is build 9-ea+153.

[wsiqueir@wsiqueir jdk-9]$ ./bin/jshell --add-modules jdk.incubator.httpclient

Now I am ready to test the API using jshell! Just one thing to notice: The online HTTPClient documentation is not the same as in the version I showed above, we should trust the documentation that comes with the JDK bits!

Simple HTTP request

You need 3 lines of code to make an HTTP request. You could transform this in one liner code:

String body = HttpClient.newHttpClient().send(HttpRequest.newBuilder(URI.create("http://www.google.com")).GET().build(),  HttpResponse.BodyHandler.asString()).body()

mmmmm, better not.

Using Basic Authentication

I didn't like having to write a subclass of Authenticator just to set my credentials - that must be  better way to achieve this, but at least for now we know it works greatly!

Setting HTTP Headers

As you can see you can set HTTP headers when creating a new request. 

Conclusion

We tested the new Http Client API! I will stop here, but you can continue and test:

* Proxy configuration

* Use an executor

* SSL parameters

I saw all these methods on HttpClient and HttpBuilder methods - it is a full and modern Http client, guys! The only thing I didn't like is how we configure BASIC connection, but, as I mentioned, this code is a subject to change. Here's the code if you want to copy and paste it: