Below is an example using Commons HttpClient library to retrieve information from a website using HTTP GET method. The response will be returned as stream by the HttpMethod.getResponseBodyAsStream() method. If you want something simple you can get the response as string by using the HttpMethod.getResponseBodyAsString() method.

package org.kodejava.example.commons.httpclient;

import org.apache.commons.httpclient.HttpClient;
import org.apache.commons.httpclient.HttpMethod;
import org.apache.commons.httpclient.HttpStatus;
import org.apache.commons.httpclient.methods.GetMethod;

import java.io.*;
import java.nio.charset.StandardCharsets;

public class HttpGetDemo {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        HttpClient client = new HttpClient();
        HttpMethod method = new GetMethod("https://kodejava.org");

        try {
            client.executeMethod(method);

            if (method.getStatusCode() == HttpStatus.SC_OK) {
                InputStream is = method.getResponseBodyAsStream();

                if (is != null) {
                    Writer writer = new StringWriter();
                    char[] buffer = new char[1024];
                    try {
                        Reader reader = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(is,
                            StandardCharsets.UTF_8));
                        int length;
                        while ((length = reader.read(buffer)) != -1) {
                            writer.write(buffer, 0, length);
                        }
                    } finally {
                        is.close();
                    }
                    System.out.println("Response = " + writer.toString());
                }
            }
        } catch (IOException e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        } finally {
            method.releaseConnection();
        }
    }
}

Maven Dependencies

<!-- http://repo1.maven.org/maven2/commons-httpclient/commons-httpclient/3.1/commons-httpclient-3.1.jar -->
<dependency>
    <groupId>commons-httpclient</groupId>
    <artifactId>commons-httpclient</artifactId>
    <version>3.1</version>
</dependency>

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Wayan Saryada

Founder at Kode Java Org

I am a programmer, a runner, a recreational diver, currently live in the island of Bali, Indonesia. Mostly programming in Java, Spring Framework, Hibernate / JPA. If these posts help, you can support me, buy me a cup of coffee or tea. Thank you 🥳

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