HttpURLConnection Class

Definition

[Android.Runtime.Register("java/net/HttpURLConnection", DoNotGenerateAcw=true)]
public abstract class HttpURLConnection : Java.Net.URLConnection

[<Android.Runtime.Register("java/net/HttpURLConnection", DoNotGenerateAcw=true)>]
type HttpURLConnection = class
    inherit URLConnection

Inheritance

Object

Object

URLConnection

HttpURLConnection

Derived

Javax.Net.Ssl.HttpsURLConnection

Attributes

RegisterAttribute

Remarks

A URLConnection with support for HTTP-specific features. See the spec for details.

Uses of this class follow a pattern: <ol> <li>Obtain a new HttpURLConnection by calling URL#openConnection() URL.openConnection() and casting the result to HttpURLConnection. <li>Prepare the request. The primary property of a request is its URI. Request headers may also include metadata such as credentials, preferred content types, and session cookies. <li>Optionally upload a request body. Instances must be configured with #setDoOutput(boolean) setDoOutput(true) if they include a request body. Transmit data by writing to the stream returned by #getOutputStream(). <li>Read the response. Response headers typically include metadata such as the response body's content type and length, modified dates and session cookies. The response body may be read from the stream returned by #getInputStream(). If the response has no body, that method returns an empty stream. <li>Disconnect. Once the response body has been read, the HttpURLConnection should be closed by calling #disconnect(). Disconnecting releases the resources held by a connection so they may be closed or reused. </ol>

For example, to retrieve the webpage at http://www.android.com/:

{@code
              URL url = new URL("http://www.android.com/");
              HttpURLConnection urlConnection = (HttpURLConnection) url.openConnection();
              try {
                InputStream in = new BufferedInputStream(urlConnection.getInputStream());
                readStream(in);
              } finally {
                urlConnection.disconnect();
              }
            }

<h3>Secure Communication with HTTPS</h3> Calling URL#openConnection() on a URL with the "https" scheme will return an HttpsURLConnection, which allows for overriding the default javax.net.ssl.HostnameVerifier HostnameVerifier and javax.net.ssl.SSLSocketFactory SSLSocketFactory. An application-supplied SSLSocketFactory created from an javax.net.ssl.SSLContext SSLContext can provide a custom javax.net.ssl.X509TrustManager X509TrustManager for verifying certificate chains and a custom javax.net.ssl.X509KeyManager X509KeyManager for supplying client certificates. See javax.net.ssl.HttpsURLConnection HttpsURLConnection for more details.

<h3>Response Handling</h3> HttpURLConnection will follow up to five HTTP redirects. It will follow redirects from one origin server to another. This implementation doesn't follow redirects from HTTPS to HTTP or vice versa.

If the HTTP response indicates that an error occurred, #getInputStream() will throw an IOException. Use #getErrorStream() to read the error response. The headers can be read in the normal way using #getHeaderFields(),

<h3>Posting Content</h3> To upload data to a web server, configure the connection for output using #setDoOutput(boolean) setDoOutput(true).

For best performance, you should call either #setFixedLengthStreamingMode(int) when the body length is known in advance, or #setChunkedStreamingMode(int) when it is not. Otherwise HttpURLConnection will be forced to buffer the complete request body in memory before it is transmitted, wasting (and possibly exhausting) heap and increasing latency.

For example, to perform an upload:

{@code
              HttpURLConnection urlConnection = (HttpURLConnection) url.openConnection();
              try {
                urlConnection.setDoOutput(true);
                urlConnection.setChunkedStreamingMode(0);

                OutputStream out = new BufferedOutputStream(urlConnection.getOutputStream());
                writeStream(out);

                InputStream in = new BufferedInputStream(urlConnection.getInputStream());
                readStream(in);
              } finally {
                urlConnection.disconnect();
              }
            }

<h3>Performance</h3> The input and output streams returned by this class are <strong>not buffered</strong>. Most callers should wrap the returned streams with java.io.BufferedInputStream BufferedInputStream or java.io.BufferedOutputStream BufferedOutputStream. Callers that do only bulk reads or writes may omit buffering.

When transferring large amounts of data to or from a server, use streams to limit how much data is in memory at once. Unless you need the entire body to be in memory at once, process it as a stream (rather than storing the complete body as a single byte array or string).

To reduce latency, this class may reuse the same underlying Socket for multiple request/response pairs. As a result, HTTP connections may be held open longer than necessary. Calls to #disconnect() may return the socket to a pool of connected sockets.

By default, this implementation of HttpURLConnection requests that servers use gzip compression and it automatically decompresses the data for callers of #getInputStream(). The Content-Encoding and Content-Length response headers are cleared in this case. Gzip compression can be disabled by setting the acceptable encodings in the request header:

{@code
              urlConnection.setRequestProperty("Accept-Encoding", "identity");
            }

Setting the Accept-Encoding request header explicitly disables automatic decompression and leaves the response headers intact; callers must handle decompression as needed, according to the Content-Encoding header of the response.

#getContentLength() returns the number of bytes transmitted and cannot be used to predict how many bytes can be read from #getInputStream() for compressed streams. Instead, read that stream until it is exhausted, i.e. when InputStream#read returns -1.

<h3>Handling Network Sign-On</h3> Some Wi-Fi networks block Internet access until the user clicks through a sign-on page. Such sign-on pages are typically presented by using HTTP redirects. You can use #getURL() to test if your connection has been unexpectedly redirected. This check is not valid until <strong>after</strong> the response headers have been received, which you can trigger by calling #getHeaderFields() or #getInputStream(). For example, to check that a response was not redirected to an unexpected host:

{@code
              HttpURLConnection urlConnection = (HttpURLConnection) url.openConnection();
              try {
                InputStream in = new BufferedInputStream(urlConnection.getInputStream());
                if (!url.getHost().equals(urlConnection.getURL().getHost())) {
                  // we were redirected! Kick the user out to the browser to sign on?
                }
                ...
              } finally {
                urlConnection.disconnect();
              }
            }

<h3>HTTP Authentication</h3> HttpURLConnection supports HTTP basic authentication. Use Authenticator to set the VM-wide authentication handler:

{@code
              Authenticator.setDefault(new Authenticator() {
                protected PasswordAuthentication getPasswordAuthentication() {
                  return new PasswordAuthentication(username, password.toCharArray());
                }
              });
            }

Unless paired with HTTPS, this is <strong>not</strong> a secure mechanism for user authentication. In particular, the username, password, request and response are all transmitted over the network without encryption.

<h3>Sessions with Cookies</h3> To establish and maintain a potentially long-lived session between client and server, HttpURLConnection includes an extensible cookie manager. Enable VM-wide cookie management using CookieHandler and CookieManager:

{@code
              CookieManager cookieManager = new CookieManager();
              CookieHandler.setDefault(cookieManager);
            }

By default, CookieManager accepts cookies from the origin server only. Two other policies are included: CookiePolicy#ACCEPT_ALL and CookiePolicy#ACCEPT_NONE. Implement CookiePolicy to define a custom policy.

The default CookieManager keeps all accepted cookies in memory. It will forget these cookies when the VM exits. Implement CookieStore to define a custom cookie store.

In addition to the cookies set by HTTP responses, you may set cookies programmatically. To be included in HTTP request headers, cookies must have the domain and path properties set.

By default, new instances of HttpCookie work only with servers that support RFC 2965 cookies. Many web servers support only the older specification, RFC 2109. For compatibility with the most web servers, set the cookie version to 0.

For example, to receive www.twitter.com in French:

{@code
              HttpCookie cookie = new HttpCookie("lang", "fr");
              cookie.setDomain("twitter.com");
              cookie.setPath("/");
              cookie.setVersion(0);
              cookieManager.getCookieStore().add(new URI("http://twitter.com/"), cookie);
            }

<h3>HTTP Methods</h3>

HttpURLConnection uses the GET method by default. It will use POST if #setDoOutput setDoOutput(true) has been called. Other HTTP methods (OPTIONS, HEAD, PUT, DELETE and TRACE) can be used with #setRequestMethod.

<h3>Proxies</h3> By default, this class will connect directly to the origin server. It can also connect via an Proxy.Type#HTTP HTTP or Proxy.Type#SOCKS SOCKS proxy. To use a proxy, use URL#openConnection(Proxy) URL.openConnection(Proxy) when creating the connection.

<h3>IPv6 Support</h3>

This class includes transparent support for IPv6. For hosts with both IPv4 and IPv6 addresses, it will attempt to connect to each of a host's addresses until a connection is established.

<h3>Response Caching</h3> Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich, API level 15) includes a response cache. See android.net.http.HttpResponseCache for instructions on enabling HTTP caching in your application.

<h3>Avoiding Bugs In Earlier Releases</h3> Prior to Android 2.2 (Froyo), this class had some frustrating bugs. In particular, calling close() on a readable InputStream could poison the connection pool. Work around this by disabling connection pooling:

{@code
            private void disableConnectionReuseIfNecessary() {
              // Work around pre-Froyo bugs in HTTP connection reuse.
              if (Integer.parseInt(Build.VERSION.SDK) < Build.VERSION_CODES.FROYO) {
                System.setProperty("http.keepAlive", "false");
              }
            }}

Each instance of HttpURLConnection may be used for one request/response pair. Instances of this class are not thread safe.

Added in JDK1.1.

Java documentation for java.net.HttpURLConnection.

Portions of this page are modifications based on work created and shared by the Android Open Source Project and used according to terms described in the Creative Commons 2.5 Attribution License.

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Applies to