How can I get an http response body as a string in Java?

Question

I know there used to be a way to get it with apache commons as documented here: http://hc.apache.org/httpclient-legacy/apidocs/org/apache/commons/httpclient/HttpMethod.html and an example here:

http://www.kodejava.org/examples/416.html

but i believe this is deprecated. Is there any other way to make an http get request in java and get the response body as a string and not a stream?

Answer 1

Here are two examples from my working project.

1. Using EntityUtils and HttpEntity

   HttpResponse response = httpClient.execute(new HttpGet(URL));
   HttpEntity entity = response.getEntity();
   String responseString = EntityUtils.toString(entity, "UTF-8");
   System.out.println(responseString);
   

2. Using BasicResponseHandler

   HttpResponse response = httpClient.execute(new HttpGet(URL));
   String responseString = new BasicResponseHandler().handleResponse(response);
   System.out.println(responseString);