Deprecated Java HttpClient - How hard can it be?

All I'm trying to do is download some JSON and deserialize it into an object. I haven't got as far as downloading the JSON yet.

Almost every single HttpClient example I can find, including those on the apache site looks something like...

import org.apache.http.client.HttpClient;
import org.apache.http.impl.client.DefaultHttpClient;

public void blah() {
    HttpClient client = new DefaultHttpClient();
    ...
}

However, Netbeans tells me that DefaultHttpClient is deprecated. I've tried googling for DefaultHttpClient deprecated and as many other variations as I can think of and can't find any useful results, so I'm obviously missing something.

What is the correct Java7 way to download the contents of a webpage? Is there really no decent Http Client as part of the language? I find that hard to believe.

My Maven dependency for this is...

<dependency>
    <groupId>org.apache.httpcomponents</groupId>
    <artifactId>httpclient</artifactId>
    <version>LATEST</version>
    <type>jar</type>
</dependency>

Solution 1:

Relevant imports:

import org.apache.http.impl.client.CloseableHttpClient;
import org.apache.http.impl.client.HttpClientBuilder;
import java.io.IOException;

Usage:

HttpClient httpClient = HttpClientBuilder.create().build();

EDIT (after Jules' suggestion):

As the build() method returns a CloseableHttpClient which is-a AutoClosable, you can place the declaration in a try-with-resources statement (Java 7+):

try (CloseableHttpClient httpClient = HttpClientBuilder.create().build()) {

    // use httpClient (no need to close it explicitly)

} catch (IOException e) {

    // handle

}

Solution 2:

IMHO the accepted answer is correct but misses some 'teaching' as it does not explain how to come up with the answer. For all deprecated classes look at the JavaDoc (if you do not have it either download it or go online), it will hint at which class to use to replace the old code. Of course it will not tell you everything, but this is a start. Example:

...
 *
 * @deprecated (4.3) use {@link HttpClientBuilder}.  <----- THE HINT IS HERE !
 */
@ThreadSafe
@Deprecated
public class DefaultHttpClient extends AbstractHttpClient {

Now you have the class to use, HttpClientBuilder, as there is no constructor to get a builder instance you may guess that there must be a static method instead: create. Once you have the builder you can also guess that as for most builders there is a build method, thus:

org.apache.http.impl.client.HttpClientBuilder.create().build();

AutoClosable:

As Jules hinted in the comments, the returned class implements java.io.Closable, so if you use Java 7 or above you can now do:

    try (CloseableHttpClient httpClient = HttpClientBuilder.create().build()) {...}

The advantage is that you do not have to deal with finally and nulls.

Other relevant info

Also make sure to read about connection pooling and set the timeouts.

Solution 3:

Examples from Apache use this:

CloseableHttpClient httpclient = HttpClients.createDefault();

The class org.apache.http.impl.client.HttpClients is there since version 4.3.

The code for HttpClients.createDefault() is the same as the accepted answer in here.

Solution 4:

Try jcabi-http, which is a fluent Java HTTP client, for example:

String html = new JdkRequest("https://www.google.com")
  .header(HttpHeaders.ACCEPT, MediaType.TEXT_HTML)
  .fetch()
  .as(HttpResponse.class)
  .assertStatus(HttpURLConnection.HTTP_OK)
  .body();

Check also this blog post: http://www.yegor256.com/2014/04/11/jcabi-http-intro.html