Android: Using HttpClient to execute GET requests

The following code shows a simple utility method that will execute a HTTP GET Request and return the response in a simple Value Object.

Class that is used to hold the HTTP Response from the server.

public class HttpResponseContainerVO {

//Add any additional headers you require.

private int responseCode;

private long contentLength;

private long requestTime;

private int cacheControl;

private String contentType;

private String response;

 // Getters and Setters for all the fields.
}

Method to query and retrieve the Contents of a URL

public static HttpResponseContainerVO getResponse(String url,

Map params)

throws IOException {

 

HttpResponseContainerVO responseVo = new HttpResponseContainerVO();

DefaultHttpClient client = new DefaultHttpClient();

HttpGet get = new HttpGet(url);

if (params != null && !params.isEmpty()) {

// Add the params to GET object in the URL

// ? & ...

}

 

//Setting headers

get.addHeader(new BasicHeader("User-Agent", "--VALUE---"));

 

HttpResponse response = client.execute(get);

HttpEntity entity = response.getEntity();

responseVo.setResponseCode(response.getStatusLine().getStatusCode());

Header[] headers = response.getAllHeaders();

for (Header hdr : headers) {

  

//Read all the headers and set value to responseVO

}

InputStream inputStream = entity.getContent();

ByteArrayOutputStream content = new ByteArrayOutputStream();

// Read response into a buffered stream

int readBytes = 0;

byte[] sBuffer = new byte[512];

while ((readBytes = inputStream.read(sBuffer)) != -1) {

content.write(sBuffer, 0, readBytes);

}

responseVo.setResponse(new String(content.toByteArray()));

return responseVo;

}