HttpClient 4 - how to capture last redirect URL

Question

I have rather simple HttpClient 4 code that calls HttpGet to get HTML output. The HTML returns with scripts and image locations all set to local (e.g.

Answer 1

In version 2.3 Android still do not support following redirect (HTTP code 302). I just read location header and download again:

if (statusCode != HttpStatus.SC_OK) {
    Header[] headers = response.getHeaders("Location");

    if (headers != null && headers.length != 0) {
        String newUrl = headers[headers.length - 1].getValue();
        // call again the same downloading method with new URL
        return downloadBitmap(newUrl);
    } else {
        return null;
    }
}

No circular redirects protection here so be careful. More on by blog Follow 302 redirects with AndroidHttpClient

Answer 2

In HttpClient 4, if you are using LaxRedirectStrategy or any subclass of DefaultRedirectStrategy, this is the recommended way (see source code of DefaultRedirectStrategy) :

HttpContext context = new BasicHttpContext();
HttpResult<T> result = client.execute(request, handler, context);
URI finalUrl = request.getURI();
RedirectLocations locations = (RedirectLocations) context.getAttribute(DefaultRedirectStrategy.REDIRECT_LOCATIONS);
if (locations != null) {
    finalUrl = locations.getAll().get(locations.getAll().size() - 1);
}

Since HttpClient 4.3.x, the above code can be simplified as:

HttpClientContext context = HttpClientContext.create();
HttpResult<T> result = client.execute(request, handler, context);
URI finalUrl = request.getURI();
List<URI> locations = context.getRedirectLocations();
if (locations != null) {
    finalUrl = locations.get(locations.size() - 1);
}