Here’s a quick example of using the Apache HTTPClient library to issue a simple GET request. The URL you’re connecting to is in endpoint, and the contents of the URL can be read from the BufferedReader response_reader.
HttpGet get_request = new HttpGet(endpoint);
get_request.addHeader(HttpHeaders.USER_AGENT, "Example Reader Service");
HttpResponse http_response = HttpClientBuilder.create().build().execute(get_request);
content_type_header = http_response.getFirstHeader("Content-Type").getValue();
int response_code = http_response.getStatusLine().getStatusCode();
if (response_code != 200) {
throw new IOException("Response code is not 200 OK. Response code: " + response_code + " : " + endpoint.toString());
}
//Pull out text response
InputStream response_is = http_response.getEntity().getContent();
BufferedReader response_reader = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(response_is, "UTF-8"));