Http client API

[Chris Hegarty]

On 08/08/2012 07:25, Sean Chou wrote:
>
> Is it possible to have methods like
>
> public abstract HTMLDocument getResponse(String request)  in class
> HttpClient ?

Hi Sean,

I think what you are suggesting is content specific convenience methods, 
something akin to URLConnection.getContent(), right? In my experience, 
this type of interface can be a little problematic and not all that 
widely used.

I'm personally not in favor of such convenience methods. I can see their 
potential value, but this would appear to be a low level API and I don't 
think it should favor one specific content type over another.

 From my reading of the API it exposes various methods to access the 
response body. It is quite easy to wrap one of these in a content 
specific parser. For example, for xml you could do

   XMLInputFactory xif = ...;
 
xif.createStreamReader(client.getResponse(request).getBodyAsInputStream());

  OR
   SAXParserFactory spf = ...;
 
spf.newSAXParser().parse(client.getResponse(request).getBodyAsInputStream(), 
handler);

I think this gives the best flexibility without favoring one content 
type parser, or one programming model, over another.

Does this make sense? Have I missed the point of your proposal? Maybe 
others have a different view...

-Chris.

>
>
>
> On Wed, Aug 8, 2012 at 7:09 AM, Michael McMahon
> <michael.x.mcmahon at oracle.com <mailto:michael.x.mcmahon at oracle.com>> wrote:
>
>     Hi,
>
>     A new revision of the Http client API planned for jdk 8 can be viewed
>     at the following link
>
>     http://cr.openjdk.java.net/~__michaelm/httpclient/v0.3/
>     <http://cr.openjdk.java.net/~michaelm/httpclient/v0.3/>
>
>     We would like to review the api on this mailing list.
>     So, all comments are welcome.
>
>     Thanks
>     Michael McMahon.
>
>
>
>
> --
> Best Regards,
> Sean Chou
>