java - How to switch from HttpClient to HttpUrlConnection?

Question

I am creating an Android application and I send data from Android application to servlet through HttpClient. I use HttpPost method.

I read in Android developer site that Apache HttpClient library has some bug in Android Froyo 2.2 and after all it's good practice to use HttpUrlConnection instead HttpPost. So I want to convert my HttpPost code to HttpUrlConnectio but don't know how.

I am posting my Android code as well as servlet code here

Android code

private String postData(String valueIWantToSend[]) 
    {
        // Create a new HttpClient and Post Header
        HttpClient httpclient = new DefaultHttpClient();
        HttpPost httppost = new HttpPost(url);
        try 
        {
            List<NameValuePair> nameValuePairs = new ArrayList<NameValuePair>();
            nameValuePairs.add(new BasicNameValuePair("param1",valueIWantToSend[0]));
            nameValuePairs.add(new BasicNameValuePair("param2", valueIWantToSend[1]));
            nameValuePairs.add(new BasicNameValuePair("param3", valueIWantToSend[2]));
            nameValuePairs.add(new BasicNameValuePair("param4", valueIWantToSend[3]));
            nameValuePairs.add(new BasicNameValuePair("param5", valueIWantToSend[4]));
            nameValuePairs.add(new BasicNameValuePair("param6", valueIWantToSend[5]));
            nameValuePairs.add(new BasicNameValuePair("param7", valueIWantToSend[6]));
            httppost.setEntity(new UrlEncodedFormEntity(nameValuePairs));
            /* execute */
            HttpResponse response = httpclient.execute(httppost);
            HttpEntity rp = response.getEntity();

            //origresponseText=readContent(response);
        }
        catch (ClientProtocolException e) 
        {
            // TODO Auto-generated catch block
        } 
        catch (IOException e) 
        {
            // TODO Auto-generated catch block
        }
        return null;
    }

and here is my servlet code

protected void doGet(HttpServletRequest request, HttpServletResponse response) throws ServletException, IOException {
    // TODO Auto-generated method stub
    response.setContentType("text/html");
    ObjectOutputStream out = new ObjectOutputStream(response.getOutputStream());
    Enumeration paramNames = request.getParameterNames();
    String params[] = new String[7];
    int i=0;

    while(paramNames.hasMoreElements())
    {
        String paramName = (String) paramNames.nextElement();
        System.out.println(paramName);


        String[] paramValues = request.getParameterValues(paramName);
        params[i] = paramValues[0];

        System.out.println(params[i]);

        i++;
    }

}

Answer 1

When I read the already mentioned Google post about best practices doing HTTP requests in newer versions of Android, I thought somebody was kidding me. HttpURLConnection is really a nightmare to use, compared to almost any other way to communicate with HTTP servers (apart from direct Socket communication).

I didn't find a really slim library for Android to do the heavy lifting, so I wrote my own. You can find it at DavidWebb including a list of alternative libraries which I found (unfortunately) after developing the library.

Your code would look more or less like this:

public void testPostToUrl() throws Exception {
    String[] values = new String[3];

    Webb webb = Webb.create();
    Response<String> response = webb
            .post("http://www.example.com/abc.php")
            .param("param1", values[0])
            .param("param2", values[1])
            .param("param3", values[2])
            .asString();

    assertEquals(200, response.getStatusCode());
    assertNotNull(response.getBody());
    assertTrue(response.getBody().contains("my expected result"));
}

public void testPostToUrlShorter() throws Exception {
    String[] values = new String[3];

    Webb webb = Webb.create();
    String result = webb
            .post("http://www.example.com/abc.php")
            .param("param1", values[0])
            .param("param2", values[1])
            .param("param3", values[2])
            .ensureSuccess()
            .asString()
            .getBody();

    assertTrue(result.contains("my expected result"));
}