Recommended Java packages/jars to access and process RESTful web services

I want to access an external RESTFul Web service via Java, and use an open source package that processes the returned XML or Json result and creates object(s) from this data. I know that there are many solutions out there for this, and I'd like to get your feedback on which one I should use. For accessing the we开发者_开发技巧b services, I know that I can use packages such as apache HttpClient etc. but I'm sure that there are packages that wrap this and also take care of processing the returned data (i.e. creating java objects from the result).

Thanks, Nina

Spring is great, but this is one case where there are higher-level libraries out there that make it even easier. See for example the clients that come along with JAX-RS implementations like the Jersey client and the CXF client. Some implementations can even provide clients through dynamic proxying if you have a service interface and resource classes available. This way, you hardly have to write any code at all.

Spring Rest Template is your friend.

Spring MVC has something called "RestTemplate" which can be used exactly for this.

http://aruld.info/resttemplate-the-spring-way-of-accessing-restful-services/ http://blog.springsource.com/2009/03/27/rest-in-spring-3-resttemplate/