Apache HttpComponents Client 4.2

It provides authentication, connection management and cookie management.

This is the successor to the widely used Jakarta Commons HttpClient 3.1.

HttpClient conforms to the following specifications:
* RFC 1945 Hypertext Transfer Protocol -- HTTP/1.0
* RFC 2616 Hypertext Transfer Protocol -- HTTP/1.1
* RFC 2109 HTTP State Management Mechanism (Cookies)
* RFC 2965 HTTP State Management Mechanism (Cookies v2)
* RFC 2617 HTTP Authentication: Basic and Digest Access Authentication

Here are some key features of "Apache HttpComponents Client":

· Supports HTTPS
· Connections through HTTP proxies
· Tunneled HTTPS connections
· Basic authentication schemes
· Plug-in mechanism
· Custom authentication schemes
· Pluggable secure socket factories
· Connection management support
· Detects and closes stale connections
· Automatic Cookie handling
· Custom cookie policies
· Request output streams
· Response input streams
· Persistent connections
· Direct access to the response code and headers sent by the server
· The ability to set connection timeouts
· Standards based
· Pure Java code
· Implements HTTP 1.0 and 1.1
· Supports all HTTP methods (GET, POST, PUT, DELETE, HEAD, OPTIONS, and TRACE)
· Written in OOP code

What's New in This Release: [ read full changelog ]

· New facade API for HttpClient based on the concept of a fluent interface. The fluent API exposes only the most fundamental functions of HttpClient and is intended for relatively simple use cases that do not require the full flexibility of HttpClient. However, the fluent API almost fully relieves the users from having to deal with connection management and resource deallocation.
· Redesigned and rewritten connection management code.