Jakarta Commons Cookbook

11.1. Obtaining Jakarta HttpClient

Problem

You need to use Jakarta HttpClient to write a program to interact with a server over HTTP.

Solution

Download Jakarta HttpClient 3.0. Following the steps outlined in Recipe 1.1, download “Commons HttpClient 3.0” instead of Commons Lang. The HttpClient archive—commons-httpclient-3.0.zip—will contain a file named commons-httpclient-3.0.jar; place this JAR file in your classpath, and you will be ready to use Jakarta HttpClient.

Jakarta HttpClient depends on Jakarta Commons Logging, which can be obtained from the same binary download page as HttpClient. To download Commons Logging, see Recipe 7.9. Jakarta HttpClient also depends on Jakarta Commons Codec, which can also be obtained from the same binary download page as HttpClient. To download Commons Codec, see Recipe 2.15.

Discussion

Jakarta HttpClient is a client library for the HTTP protocol. HttpClient is very feature-rich, supporting all HTTP methods defined in RFC 2616 (Hypertext Transfer Protocol, HTTP/1.1). Jakarta HttpClient supports GET, POST, PUT, OPTIONS, HEAD, and DELETE using the command pattern; HttpMethod objects are instantiated and executed by an HttpClient object that manages server interaction and state across multiple requests. HttpClient has support for various authentication mechanisms, including Basic, Digest, and NTLM authentication. HttpClient supports both HTTP and HTTPS, and the library can manage the complexity involved in using both schemes with an HTTP proxy. HttpClient ...