Tutorial

How To Use Java HttpURLConnection for HTTP GET and POST Requests

Updated on November 19, 2022

Java

How To Use Java HttpURLConnection for HTTP GET and POST Requests

Introduction

The HttpURLConnection class from java.net package can be used to send a Java HTTP Request programmatically. In this article, you will learn how to use HttpURLConnection in a Java program to send GET and POST requests and then print the response.

Prerequisites

For this HttpURLConnection example, you should have completed the Spring MVC Tutorial because it has URLs for GET and POST HTTP methods.

Consider deploying to a localhost Tomcat server.

SpringMVCExample Summary

Java HTTP GET Request

localhost:8080/SpringMVCExample/

Java HTTP GET Request for Login Page

localhost:8080/SpringMVCExample/login

Java HTTP POST Request

localhost:8080/SpringMVCExample?userName=Pankaj
localhost:8080/SpringMVCExample/login?userName=Pankaj&pwd=apple123 - for multiple params

Deriving parameters from the form

The HTML of the login page contains the following form:

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" "https://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">
<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
<title>Login Page</title>
</head>
<body>
<form action="home" method="post">
<input type="text" name="userName"><br>
<input type="submit" value="Login">
</form>
</body>
</html>

The method is POST.
The action is home.
- localhost:8080/SpringMVCExample/home
userName is of type text.

You can construct a POST request to:

localhost:8080/SpringMVCExample/home?userName=Pankaj

This will serve as the basis for the HttpURLConnection example.

`HttpURLConnection` Example

Here are the steps for sending Java HTTP requests using HttpURLConnection class:

Create a URL object from the GET or POST URL String.
Call the openConnection() method on the URL object that returns an instance of HttpURLConnection.
Set the request method in HttpURLConnection instance (default value is GET).
Call setRequestProperty() method on HttpURLConnection instance to set request header values (such as "User-Agent", "Accept-Language", etc).
We can call getResponseCode() to get the response HTTP code. This way, we know if the request was processed successfully or if there was any HTTP error message thrown.
For GET, use Reader and InputStream to read the response and process it accordingly.
For POST, before the code handles the response, it needs to get the OutputStream from the HttpURLConnection instance and write POST parameters into it.

Here is an example program that uses HttpURLConnection to send Java GET and POST requests:

HttpURLConnectionExample.java

package com.journaldev.utils;

import java.io.BufferedReader;
import java.io.IOException;
import java.io.InputStreamReader;
import java.io.OutputStream;
import java.net.HttpURLConnection;
import java.net.URL;

public class HttpURLConnectionExample {

	private static final String USER_AGENT = "Mozilla/5.0";

	private static final String GET_URL = "https://localhost:9090/SpringMVCExample";

	private static final String POST_URL = "https://localhost:9090/SpringMVCExample/home";

	private static final String POST_PARAMS = "userName=Pankaj";

	public static void main(String[] args) throws IOException {
		sendGET();
		System.out.println("GET DONE");
		sendPOST();
		System.out.println("POST DONE");
	}

	private static void sendGET() throws IOException {
		URL obj = new URL(GET_URL);
		HttpURLConnection con = (HttpURLConnection) obj.openConnection();
		con.setRequestMethod("GET");
		con.setRequestProperty("User-Agent", USER_AGENT);
		int responseCode = con.getResponseCode();
		System.out.println("GET Response Code :: " + responseCode);
		if (responseCode == HttpURLConnection.HTTP_OK) { // success
			BufferedReader in = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(con.getInputStream()));
			String inputLine;
			StringBuffer response = new StringBuffer();

			while ((inputLine = in.readLine()) != null) {
				response.append(inputLine);
			}
			in.close();

			// print result
			System.out.println(response.toString());
		} else {
			System.out.println("GET request did not work.");
		}

	}

	private static void sendPOST() throws IOException {
		URL obj = new URL(POST_URL);
		HttpURLConnection con = (HttpURLConnection) obj.openConnection();
		con.setRequestMethod("POST");
		con.setRequestProperty("User-Agent", USER_AGENT);

		// For POST only - START
		con.setDoOutput(true);
		OutputStream os = con.getOutputStream();
		os.write(POST_PARAMS.getBytes());
		os.flush();
		os.close();
		// For POST only - END

		int responseCode = con.getResponseCode();
		System.out.println("POST Response Code :: " + responseCode);

		if (responseCode == HttpURLConnection.HTTP_OK) { //success
			BufferedReader in = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(con.getInputStream()));
			String inputLine;
			StringBuffer response = new StringBuffer();

			while ((inputLine = in.readLine()) != null) {
				response.append(inputLine);
			}
			in.close();

			// print result
			System.out.println(response.toString());
		} else {
			System.out.println("POST request did not work.");
		}
	}

}

Compile and run the code. It will produce the following output:

OutputGET Response Code :: 200
<html><head>	<title>Home</title></head><body><h1>	Hello world!  </h1><P>  The time on the server is March 6, 2015 9:31:04 PM IST. </P></body></html>
GET DONE
POST Response Code :: 200
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" "https://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd"><html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8"><title>User Home Page</title></head><body><h3>Hi Pankaj</h3></body></html>
POST DONE

Compare this output to the browser HTTP response.

If you have to send GET and POST requests over HTTPS protocol, then you need to use javax.net.ssl.HttpsURLConnection instead of java.net.HttpURLConnection. HttpsURLConnection will handle the SSL handshake and encryption.

Conclusion

In this article, you learned how to use HttpURLConnection in a Java program to send GET and POST requests and then print the response.

Continue your learning with more Java tutorials.

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About the authors

Pankaj

author

Bradley Kouchi

editor

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JournalDev

DigitalOcean Employee

• March 10, 2021

HttpURLConnection sets “connection: keep-alive” by default for every request. I have written a HTTP server and I am keeping the TCP connection open as request header contains keep-alive. But when sending second request, HttpURLConnection is opening new TCP connection. Shouldn’t it use first TCP connection itself. I have tried closing input stream and disconnecting HttpURLConnection instance, but still HttpURLConnection instance always opens a new TCP connection. I have even tried setting property “http.maxConnections” to “1”. Is there any way in android to send multiple HTTP requests on a single persistent TCP connection ?

- Harish

JournalDev

DigitalOcean Employee

• February 4, 2021

Hi Pankaj, thank you so much for the post. I have an issue. When i’m trying to do a POST, i do : HttpsURLConnection con = (HttpsURLConnection) obj.openConnection(); But when it try to do : OutputStream os = con.getOutputStream(); This happened: javax.net.ssl.SSLHandshakeException: Received fatal alert: handshake_failure Is weird because when i did a POST to a google service it worked well, but with other API has this exception. Thak you for your help.

- Julian

JournalDev

DigitalOcean Employee

• September 21, 2020

Hi Pankaj, I am trying to invoke a REST API. I am getting the proper response when invoked from POSTMAN. But, when I am trying to call from a Java program, I am getting the response in some junk characters. try { URL url = new URL(“https://ucf5-zodx-fa-ext.oracledemos.com/fscmRestApi/resources/11.13.18.05/erpintegrations”);//your url i.e fetch data from . SOAPHttpsURLConnection conn = (SOAPHttpsURLConnection) url.openConnection(); conn.setRequestMethod(“POST”); String authString = “fin_impl” + “:” + “…”; // masked the password for security reasons String encodedAuth = Base64.getEncoder().encodeToString(authString.getBytes()); String authHeader = “Basic " + encodedAuth; conn.setRequestProperty (“Authorization”, authHeader); conn.setRequestProperty(“Content-Type”,“application/json”); conn.setRequestProperty(“Accept”,“application/json”); conn.setRequestProperty(“Accept-Encoding”,“gzip”); conn.setConnectTimeout(5000); conn.setDoOutput(true); OutputStreamWriter wr = new OutputStreamWriter(conn.getOutputStream()); String output = “{ “; output = output + “\””+“OperationName”+”\”:" + “\”" + “importBulkData” + “\”,“; output = output + “\””+“DocumentContent”+“\”:" + “\”" + “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” + “\”,“; output = output + “\””+“ContentType”+“\”:" + “\”" + “zip” + “\”,“; output = output + “\””+“FileName”+“\”:" + “\”" + “apinvoiceimport.zip” + “\”,“; output = output + “\””+“JobName”+“\”:" + “\”" + “oracle/apps/ess/financials/payables/invoices/transactions,APXIIMPT” + “\”,“; output = output + “\””+“ParameterList”+“\”:" + “\”" + “#NULL,US1 Business Unit,#NULL,#NULL,#NULL,#NULL,#NULL,External,#NULL,#NULL,#NULL,1,#NULL” + “\”“; output = output + " }”; System.out.println(“before writing… " + output); wr.write(output); wr.flush(); BufferedReader br = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(conn.getInputStream(), “UTF-8”)); while ((responseLine = br.readLine()) != null) { System.out.println(”… "+ responseLine + " … "); response.append(responseLine); } conn.disconnect(); } catch (Exception e) { System.out.println("Exception in NetClientGet:- " + e); } I am getting some junk and non-printable characters in the response. something as below: … ? Please help. Thanks, Hari

- Lakshmi Hari

JournalDev

DigitalOcean Employee

• August 19, 2020

I am getting error while sending below: Response Code: 405 Response: {“Message”:“The requested resource does not support http method ‘POST’.”} My Code: URL obj = new URL(strWebServiceUrl); con = (HttpsURLConnection) obj.openConnection(); //add request header //con.setRequestMethod(“GET”); con.setRequestProperty(“Content-Type”, “text/plain”); con.setRequestProperty(strHeaderKey, strHeaderValue); con.setDoOutput(true); os = con.getOutputStream(); os.flush(); int responseCode = con.getResponseCode(); if(responseCode!=200) { in = new BufferedReader( new InputStreamReader(con.getErrorStream())); } else { in = new BufferedReader( new InputStreamReader(con.getInputStream())); } String inputLine; StringBuffer response = new StringBuffer(); while ((inputLine = in.readLine()) != null) { response.append(inputLine); } if(responseCode!=200) { logger.error("Error Response Code from webservice is “+responseCode+” Response: “+response.toString()); System.out.println(response.toString()); } else { logger.info(” SUCCESSFUL response from web service: "+response.toString()); System.out.println(response.toString()); }

- Prem C

JournalDev

DigitalOcean Employee

• June 29, 2020

Hi , I am using Post method to send JSON object through proxy setting and header . Response I am getting 500 Internal server Error ? Please help me. Thx

- Paddy

JournalDev

DigitalOcean Employee

• June 23, 2020

How can i send a request body which contains nested Json for example using java.net.HttpURLConnection:- { “moduleId”: “abc”, “properties”: { “desired”: { “Graphs”: { “PersonDetection”: { “location”: “https://graphexample.yaml”, “version”: 1, “parameters”: {}, “enabled”: true, “status”: “started” } } } }

- Neha

JournalDev

DigitalOcean Employee

• April 29, 2020

Hello I have to send a GET request with parameter and get Json response from third party using API key. Kindly help.

- Ramya

JournalDev

DigitalOcean Employee

• February 8, 2020

here is my function below : , connection is made successfully because i receive response 200 but it send blank data to the POST request. hence my POST request makes entry to db with all fields blank except id i.e. which I am generating on POST request on server side. Note : when I capture the url and json string on debug mode , and send same through POSTMAN , data gets created successfully at DB and i receive 200. I am clueless now, how to debug the issue public static int POST(String urlstr, String jsonbody) { URL url = null; HttpURLConnection urlConnection = null; String result = “”; try { url = new URL(urlstr); urlConnection = (HttpURLConnection) url.openConnection(); urlConnection.setConnectTimeout(5000); urlConnection.setRequestProperty(“Content-Type”, “application/json”); urlConnection.setRequestProperty(“Accept”, “application/json”); urlConnection.setDoInput(true); urlConnection.setDoOutput(true); urlConnection.setRequestMethod(“POST”); OutputStream wr = urlConnection.getOutputStream(); wr.write(jsonbody.getBytes()); wr.flush(); wr.close(); System.out.println(“response code from server” + urlConnection.getResponseCode()); return urlConnection.getResponseCode(); } catch (Exception e) { e.printStackTrace(); return 500; }finally { urlConnection.disconnect(); } }

- seema

JournalDev

DigitalOcean Employee

• September 2, 2019

Hi Pankaj, I have one small required with this HTTP post connection, in postman I am using post method to pass a url and content from body section choosing raw option. I am able to open the connection but not sure how to post this body content in post call. can you please advise. Thanks in advance

- Teena

JournalDev

DigitalOcean Employee

• August 19, 2019

Hai I have to develop a program for get and post request can you help me for that.

- Krishnan