How to use cURL in Java?

Question

I am a newbie in java and wanted to use curl in java. What is my question is curl built-in in java or I have to install it from any 3rd party source to use with Java. If so,

Answer 1

You can make use of java.net.URL and/or java.net.URLConnection.

URL url = new URL("https://stackoverflow.com");

try (BufferedReader reader = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(url.openStream(), "UTF-8"))) {
    for (String line; (line = reader.readLine()) != null;) {
        System.out.println(line);
    }
}

Also see the Oracle's simple tutorial on the subject. It's however a bit verbose. To end up with less verbose code, you may want to consider Apache HttpClient instead.

By the way: if your next question is "How to process HTML result?", then the answer is "Use a HTML parser. No, don't use regex for this.".

See also:

• How to use java.net.URLConnection to fire and handle HTTP requests?
• What are the pros and cons of the leading Java HTML parsers?