On March 3, 2010, Ning released a new Asynchronous HTTP Client library as open source. Its purpose is to allow Java applications to easily execute HTTP requests and asynchronously process the HTTP responses. You can get it at
http://github.com/ning/async-http-client
The Async HTTP Client library is simple to use. First, in order to add it to your Maven project, simply add this dependency:
<dependency>
<groupId>com.ning</groupId>
<artifactId>async-http-client</artifactId>
<version>1.0.0-SNAPSHOT</version>
</dependency>For now, you’ll have to add the Sonatype snapshot repo to your settings in order to be able to access the snapshot builds:
http://oss.sonatype.org/service/local/repositories/snapshots/content
Then in your code you can simply do:
import com.ning.http.client.*;
import java.util.concurrent.Future;
AsyncHttpClient asyncHttpClient = new AsyncHttpClient();
Future<Response> f = asyncHttpClient.prepareGet("http://www.ning.com/").execute();
Response r = f.get();
You can also accomplish asynchronous operation without using a Future if you want to receive and process the response in your handler:
import com.ning.http.client.*;
import java.util.concurrent.Future;
AsyncHttpClient asyncHttpClient = new AsyncHttpClient();
asyncHttpClient.prepareGet("http://www.ning.com/").execute(new AsyncCompletionHandler(){
@Override
public Response onCompleted(Response response) throws Exception{
// Do something with the Response
// ... `
return response;
}
@Override
public void onThrowable(Throwable t){
// Something wrong happened.
}
});
You can also mix Future with AsyncHandler to only retrieve part of the asynchronous response
import com.ning.http.client.*;
import java.util.concurrent.Future;
AsyncHttpClient asyncHttpClient = new AsyncHttpClient();
Future<Integer> f = asyncHttpClient.prepareGet("http://www.ning.com/")
.execute(new AsyncCompletionHandler(){
@Override
public Integer onCompleted(Response response) throws Exception{
// Do something with the Response
return response.getStatusCode();
}
@Override
public void onThrowable(Throwable t){
// Something wrong happened.
}
});
int statuѕCode = f.get();
You have full control on the Response life cycle, so you can decide at any moment to stop processing what the server is sending back:
import com.ning.http.client.*;
import java.util.concurrent.Future;
AsyncHttpClient c = new AsyncHttpClient();
Future<String> f = c.prepareGet("http://www.ning.com/").execute(new AsyncHandler() {
private StringBuilder builder = new StringBuilder();
@Override
public STATE onStatusReceived(HttpResponseStatus status) throws Exception {
int statusCode = status.getStatusCode();
return STATE.CONTINUE;
}
@Override
public STATE onHeadersReceived(HttpResponseHeaders h) throws Exception {
Headers headers = h.getHeaders();
// The headers have been read
// If you don't want to read the body, or stop processing the response
return STATE.ABORT;
}
@Override
public STATE onBodyPartReceived(HttpResponseBodyPart bodyPart) throws Exception {
builder.append(new String(bodyPart.getBodyPartBytes()));
return STATE.CONTINUE;
}
@Override
public String onCompleted() throws Exception {
// Will be invoked once the response has been fully read or a
// ResponseComplete exception has been thrown.
return builder.toString();
}
@Override
public void onThrowable(Throwable t) {
}
});
String bodyResponse = f.get();Finally, you can also configure the AsyncHttpClient via it’s AsyncHttpClientConfig object:
import com.ning.http.client.*;
import java.util.concurrent.Future;
AsyncHttpClientConfig cf = new AsyncHttpClientConfig.Builder()
.setProxyServer(new ProxyServer("127.0.0.1", 38080)).build();
AsyncHttpClient c = new AsyncHttpClient(cf);
The library uses Java non blocking I/O for supporting asynchronous operations. The default asynchronous provider is build on top of Netty (http://www.jboss.org/netty), the Java NIO Client Server Socket Framework from JBoss, but the library exposes a configurable provider SPI which allows to easily plug in other frameworks.
Keep up to date on the library development by joining the Asynchronous HTTP Client discussion group.
(*) This blog has been written in collaboration with Thomas Dudziak
21 Responses to “Introducing Ning’s Asynchronous Http Client library.”
This looks/sounds nice, but does it have a required dependency on commons logging like the other apache http client lib?
By Phillip Ross on Mar 4, 2010
Nice. Does the library comes with API to process dom element? Like find a particular element either by name or id and retrieve the value of the element?
By Yiguang Hu on Mar 4, 2010
@Philip Ross No, currently we only have a dependency on log4j.
By Jeanfrancois Arcand on Mar 4, 2010
@Yiguang Hu Not yet. Right now you either manipulate the raw bytes, String, Stream or you construct yourself your component that will consume those bytes. But if you are interested to contribute and help, just subscribe to http://groups.google.com/group/asynchttpclient so we can start the discussion.
By Jeanfrancois Arcand on Mar 4, 2010
Hrm, looking like it requires Netty, which requires apache httpclient… which requires commons-logging
By Phillip Ross on Mar 4, 2010
@Phillip Ross: No, Netty does not require Apache HttpClient.
By Trustin Lee on Mar 4, 2010
Nice project!
Easy to integrate with the Twitter Streaming API:
http://matthiaswessendorf.wordpress.com/2010/03/05/nings-async-http-client-and-twitter-streaming-api/
By Matthias Wessendorf on Mar 5, 2010
Http-Client will soon be removed. It’s just to support multi-part (we are using their classes for historical reason).
By Jeanfrancois Arcand on Mar 5, 2010
we are going to support this as an optional http engine. looks really good.
-Adrian
founder jclouds
By jclouds on Mar 5, 2010
Hi,
First of all I would like to thank you for the all your contributions to open source society. My question will be related to Jersey Client. Does this can be utilized for Restful Resources?
Thanks
By Cemal on Mar 6, 2010
@Cemal, I’ve created a branch in Jersey exactly for that purpose. Paul Sandoz and I will work on it in the upcoming weeks. Stay tuned!
By Jeanfrancois Arcand on Mar 10, 2010
The library looks great. thanks for open sourcing it!
As to the logging please have a look at SLF4J and Logback:
http://www.slf4j.org/ (replacement for commons-logging)
http://logback.qos.ch/ (replacement for log4j)
Both are from the original log4j author.
I would love to see the adoption of these rise. It’d be cool if new projects stopped using Log4j but it’s all to familiar to most developers
By Georg on May 7, 2010
which version of Netty does it require, I tried the latest stable release of Netty (3.1.5GA) and got the following exception:
java.lang.NoSuchMethodError: org.jboss.netty.handler.codec.http.HttpRequest.setHeader(Ljava/lang/String;Ljava/lang/Object;)V
at com.ning.http.client.providers.NettyAsyncHttpProvider.construct(NettyAsyncHttpProvider.java:350)
at com.ning.http.client.providers.NettyAsyncHttpProvider.buildRequest(NettyAsyncHttpProvider.java:283)
at com.ning.http.client.providers.NettyAsyncHttpProvider.access$700(NettyAsyncHttpProvider.java:108)
at com.ning.http.client.providers.NettyAsyncHttpProvider$ConnectListener$Builder.build(NettyAsyncHttpProvider.java:242)
at com.ning.http.client.providers.NettyAsyncHttpProvider.execute(NettyAsyncHttpProvider.java:506)
at com.ning.http.client.AsyncHttpClient.executeRequest(AsyncHttpClient.java:385)
at com.ning.http.client.AsyncHttpClient$BoundRequestBuilder.execute(AsyncHttpClient.java:197)
By Sezgin Kucukkaraaslan on May 17, 2010
Can anyone answer Sezgin Kucukkaraaslan’s question? I have the same problem:
ava.lang.NoSuchMethodError: org.jboss.netty.handler.codec.http.HttpRequest.setHeader(Ljava/lang/String;Ljava/lang/Object;)V
at com.ning.http.client.providers.NettyAsyncHttpProvider.construct(NettyAsyncHttpProvider.java:350)
at com.ning.http.client.providers.NettyAsyncHttpProvider.buildRequest(NettyAsyncHttpProvider.java:283)
at com.ning.http.client.providers.NettyAsyncHttpProvider.access$700(NettyAsyncHttpProvider.java:108)
at com.ning.http.client.providers.NettyAsyncHttpProvider$ConnectListener$Builder.build(NettyAsyncHttpProvider.java:242)
at com.ning.http.client.providers.NettyAsyncHttpProvider.execute(NettyAsyncHttpProvider.java:506)
at com.ning.http.client.AsyncHttpClient.executeRequest(AsyncHttpClient.java:385)
at com.ning.http.client.AsyncHttpClient$BoundRequestBuilder.execute(AsyncHttpClient.java:197)
By benjamin on May 26, 2010
You need to use Netty 3.2.0.CR1 (apology for the delay), but I don’t get those notification.
By Jeanfrancois Arcand on Jun 11, 2010
Hi!
Is it a good idea to use this framework with Atmosphere? I tried it out and never get a response.
What client is your recommendations to use with Atmoshpere?
Regards,
Pelle
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