Java HTTP Client 1.4.2 review

Java HTTP Client provides features not found in the Sun HttpURLConnection implementation: NTLM support, many different timeout options, tracing, source code availability, and quick support.

License: Shareware OS: Mac OS X File size: 0K Developer: Oakland Software, Inc. Buy Now Price: $500.00 Updated: 01 Jun 2005

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Java HTTP Client provides features not found in the Sun HttpURLConnection implementation: NTLM support, many different timeout options, tracing, source code availability, and quick support. Completely plug-compatible with HttpURLConnection.

The Oakland Software Java HTTP client:

• was initially developed for a company doing high-performance server-side access to websites and services. They found that none of the available solutions would work for them, mostly because of quality and support issues.
• is completely plug compatible with the java.net.HttpURLConnection class. It is fully contained in one JAR file with no dependencies, and can be installed by setting a single property.
• is also fully supported; you will get fast answers to your questions, and bugs will be fixed, usually within a day or two. A source license for the HTTP client is also available.

Here are some key features of "Java HTTP Client":
HTTP NTLM client authentication support on a non-Windows platform (possibly for SOAP or XML-RPC)?
use getErrorStream()?
tracing to see what's going on?
timeouts for connection establishment?
better performance in handling long messages?
fixes trouble with connections being closed by the server?
run into other bugs in the HTTP client that Sun has not fixed?
you have different behavior in the different HTTP clients by the application server vendors.

Limitations:
The evaluation verion has full functionality and no time limit. However, it will produce verbose trace messages as well as messages warning that it is an evaluation version. This will dramatically slow the performance.

What's New:
Enhancements
support preemptive HTTP authentication
add support for applets
allow explicit control over which underlying connection is associated with an HTTP connection
support the IBM JRE
Bugs Fixed
Host: header not set correctly in redirection.