Android GET and POST Request

Question

Can anyone point me to a good implementation of a way to send GET and POST Requests. They are alot of ways to do these, and i am looking for the best implementation. Secondly is

Answer 1

I prefer using dedicated class to do GET/POST and any HTTP connections or requests. Moreover I use HttpClient to execute these GET/POST methods.

Below is sample from my project. I needed thread-safe execution so there is ThreadSafeClientConnManager.

There is an example of using GET (fetchData) and POST (sendOrder)

As you can see execute is general method for executing HttpUriRequest - it can be POST or GET.

public final class ClientHttpClient {

private static DefaultHttpClient client;
private static CookieStore cookieStore;
private static HttpContext httpContext;

static {
    cookieStore = new BasicCookieStore();
    httpContext = new BasicHttpContext();
    httpContext.setAttribute(ClientContext.COOKIE_STORE, cookieStore);
    client = getThreadSafeClient();
    HttpParams params = new BasicHttpParams();
    HttpConnectionParams.setConnectionTimeout(params, AppConstants.CONNECTION_TIMEOUT);
    HttpConnectionParams.setSoTimeout(params, AppConstants.SOCKET_TIMEOUT);
    client.setParams(params);
}

private static DefaultHttpClient getThreadSafeClient() {
    DefaultHttpClient client = new DefaultHttpClient();
    ClientConnectionManager mgr = client.getConnectionManager();
    HttpParams params = client.getParams();
    client = new DefaultHttpClient(new ThreadSafeClientConnManager(params, mgr.getSchemeRegistry()),
            params);
    return client;
}

private ClientHttpClient() {
}

public static String execute(HttpUriRequest http) throws IOException {
    BufferedReader reader = null;
    try {
        StringBuilder builder = new StringBuilder();
        HttpResponse response = client.execute(http, httpContext);
        StatusLine statusLine = response.getStatusLine();
        int statusCode = statusLine.getStatusCode();
        HttpEntity entity = response.getEntity();
        InputStream content = entity.getContent();
        reader = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(content, CHARSET));
        String line = null;
        while((line = reader.readLine()) != null) {
            builder.append(line);
        }

        if(statusCode != 200) {
            throw new IOException("statusCode=" + statusCode + ", " + http.getURI().toASCIIString()
                    + ", " + builder.toString());
        }

        return builder.toString();
    }
    finally {
        if(reader != null) {
            reader.close();
        }
    }
}


public static List fetchData(Info info) throws JSONException, IOException {
    List out = new LinkedList();
    HttpGet request = buildFetchHttp(info);
    String json = execute(request);
    if(json.trim().length() <= 2) {
        return out;
    }
    try {
        JSONObject responseJSON = new JSONObject(json);
        if(responseJSON.has("auth_error")) {
            throw new IOException("auth_error");
        }
    }
    catch(JSONException e) {
        //ok there was no error, because response is JSONArray - not JSONObject
    }

    JSONArray jsonArray = new JSONArray(json);
    for(int i = 0; i < jsonArray.length(); i++) {
        JSONObject chunk = jsonArray.getJSONObject(i);
        ChunkParser parser = new ChunkParser(chunk);
        if(!parser.hasErrors()) {
            out.add(parser.parse());
        }
    }
    return out;
}

private static HttpGet buildFetchHttp(Info info) throws UnsupportedEncodingException {
    StringBuilder builder = new StringBuilder();
    builder.append(FETCH_TAXIS_URL);
    builder.append("?minLat=" + URLEncoder.encode("" + mapBounds.getMinLatitude(), ENCODING));
    builder.append("&maxLat=" + URLEncoder.encode("" + mapBounds.getMaxLatitude(), ENCODING));
    builder.append("&minLon=" + URLEncoder.encode("" + mapBounds.getMinLongitude(), ENCODING));
    builder.append("&maxLon=" + URLEncoder.encode("" + mapBounds.getMaxLongitude(), ENCODING));
    HttpGet get = new HttpGet(builder.toString());
    return get;
}

public static int sendOrder(OrderInfo info) throws IOException {
    HttpPost post = new HttpPost(SEND_ORDER_URL);
    List nameValuePairs = new ArrayList(1);
    nameValuePairs.add(new BasicNameValuePair("id", "" + info.getTaxi().getId()));
    nameValuePairs.add(new BasicNameValuePair("address", info.getAddressText()));
    nameValuePairs.add(new BasicNameValuePair("name", info.getName()));
    nameValuePairs.add(new BasicNameValuePair("surname", info.getSurname()));
    nameValuePairs.add(new BasicNameValuePair("phone", info.getPhoneNumber()));
    nameValuePairs.add(new BasicNameValuePair("passengers", "" + info.getPassengers()));
    nameValuePairs.add(new BasicNameValuePair("additionalDetails", info.getAdditionalDetails()));
    nameValuePairs.add(new BasicNameValuePair("lat", "" + info.getOrderLocation().getLatitudeE6()));
    nameValuePairs.add(new BasicNameValuePair("lon", "" + info.getOrderLocation().getLongitudeE6()));
    post.setEntity(new UrlEncodedFormEntity(nameValuePairs));

    String response = execute(post);
    if(response == null || response.trim().length() == 0) {
        throw new IOException("sendOrder_response_empty");
    }

    try {
        JSONObject json = new JSONObject(response);
        int orderId = json.getInt("orderId");
        return orderId;
    }
    catch(JSONException e) {
        throw new IOException("sendOrder_parsing: " + response);
    }
}

EDIT

The execute method is public because sometimes I use custom (or dynamic) GET/POST requests.

If you have URL object you can pass to execute method:

HttpGet request = new HttpGet(url.toString());
execute(request);