How to add parameters to all HttpClient request methods?

Question

I am writing some Java code that uses Apache HttpClient version 4.2.2 to hit a RESTful 3rd party API. This API has methods that utilize HTTP GET, POST, PUT and DELETE. It's important to note that I'm using a 4.x.x version and not 3.x.x, because the API changed a lot from 3 to 4. All relevant examples I've found have been for a 3.x.x version.

All API calls require you provide the api_key as a parameter (regardles of which method you are using). This means that regardles of whether I'm making a GET, POST or otherwise, I need to provide this api_key in order for the call to authenticate server-side.

// Have to figure out a way to get this into my HttpClient call,
// regardless of whether I'm using: HttpGet, HttpPost, HttpPut
// or HttpDelete...
String api_key = "blah-whatever-my-unique-api-key";

So I'm trying to figure out how to provide HttpClient with the api_key regardless of my request method (which in turn depends on which RESTful API method I'm trying to hit). It looks like HttpGet doesn't even support the notion of parameters, and HttpPost uses something called HttpParams; but again these HttpParams only seem to exist in 3.x.x version of HttpClient.

So I ask: What is the proper, v4.2.2 way to attach/add my api_key String to all four:

• HttpGet
• HttpPost
• HttpPut
• HttpDelete

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

You can use URIBuilder class to build the request URI for all the HTTP methods. URI builder provides setParameter method to set the parameter.

URIBuilder builder = new URIBuilder();
builder.setScheme("http").setHost("www.google.com").setPath("/search")
    .setParameter("q", "httpclient")
    .setParameter("btnG", "Google Search")
    .setParameter("aq", "f")
    .setParameter("oq", "");
URI uri = builder.build();
HttpGet httpget = new HttpGet(uri);
System.out.println(httpget.getURI());

The output should be

http://www.google.com/search?q=httpclient&btnG=Google+Search&aq=f&oq=