Proper way to make a HTTP request in Android

Which is the best way to make a HTTP connection. I mean using proxies and so on. Now I'm using this one:

StringBuilder entity = new StringBuilder();
entity.append("request body");

AndroidHttpClient httpClient = AndroidHttpClient.newInstance(null);

String proxyHost = android.net.Proxy.getDefaultHost();
int proxyPort = android.net.Proxy.getDefaultPort();
if (proxyHost != null && proxyPort 开发者_C百科> 0) {
    HttpHost proxy = new HttpHost(proxyHost, proxyPort);
    ConnRouteParams.setDefaultProxy(httpClient.getParams(), proxy);
}
HttpPost httpPost = new HttpPost("https://w.qiwi.ru/term2/xmlutf.jsp");
httpPost.setEntity(new StringEntity(entity.toString(), "UTF-8"));
httpPost.setHeader("Content-Type", "application/x-www-form-urlencoded");
HttpParams params = new BasicHttpParams();
HttpConnectionParams.setConnectionTimeout(params, 15000);
HttpConnectionParams.setSoTimeout(params, 30000);
httpPost.setParams(params);
HttpResponse httpResponse = httpClient.execute(httpPost);

int responseCode = httpResponse.getStatusLine().getStatusCode();
if (responseCode == HttpStatus.SC_OK) {
    // parsing response
}

I'm not really sure if that's ok, because one of my clients tells me he has an IllegalArgumentException right after setting proxy in his APN settings.

Use one method called executeRequest which makes the actual call to the host API_REST_HOST, this way (API_REST_HOST can be a value like "api.flickr.com" for flickr's rest api. The HTTP and the port get added)

 private void executeRequest(HttpGet get, ResponseHandler handler) throws IOException {
    HttpEntity entity = null;
    HttpHost host = new HttpHost(API_REST_HOST, 80, "http");
    try {
        final HttpResponse response = mClient.execute(host, get);
        if (response.getStatusLine().getStatusCode() == HttpStatus.SC_OK) {
            entity = response.getEntity();
            final InputStream in = entity.getContent();
            handler.handleResponse(in);
        }
    } catch (ConnectTimeoutException e) {
        throw new ConnectTimeoutException();
    } catch (ClientProtocolException e) {
        throw new ClientProtocolException();
    } catch (IOException e) {
        e.printStackTrace();
        throw new IOException();
    } 
    finally {
        if (entity != null) {
            try {
                entity.consumeContent();
            } catch (IOException e) {
                e.printStackTrace();
            }
        }
    }
}

Call this API from here this way:

final HttpGet get = new HttpGet(uri.build().toString());
    executeRequest(get, new ResponseHandler() {
        public void handleResponse(InputStream in) throws IOException {
            parseResponse(in, new ResponseParser() {
                public void parseResponse(XmlPullParser parser)
                        throws XmlPullParserException, IOException {
                    parseToken(parser, token, userId);
                }
            });
        }
    });

Where your uri is constructed like this:

final Uri.Builder builder = new Uri.Builder();
builder.path(ANY_PATH_AHEAD_OF_THE_BASE_URL_IF_REQD);
builder.appendQueryParameter(PARAM_KEY, PARAM_VALUE);

Your mClient is declared as a class level variable this way

private HttpClient mClient;

and finally your parseResponse can be done in this way(say you want to parse XML data)

private void parseResponse(InputStream in, ResponseParser responseParser) throws IOException {
    final XmlPullParser parser = Xml.newPullParser();
    try {
        parser.setInput(new InputStreamReader(in));

        int type;
        while ((type = parser.next()) != XmlPullParser.START_TAG &&
                type != XmlPullParser.END_DOCUMENT) {
            // Empty
        }

        if (type != XmlPullParser.START_TAG) {
            throw new InflateException(parser.getPositionDescription()
                    + ": No start tag found!");
        }

        String name = parser.getName();
        if (RESPONSE_TAG_RSP.equals(name)) {
            final String value = parser.getAttributeValue(null, RESPONSE_ATTR_STAT);
            if (!RESPONSE_STATUS_OK.equals(value)) {
                throw new IOException("Wrong status: " + value);
            }
        }

        responseParser.parseResponse(parser);

    } catch (XmlPullParserException e) {
        final IOException ioe = new IOException("Could not parse the response");
        ioe.initCause(e);
        throw ioe;
    }
}

This code takes care of all of the possible exceptions and shows how to properly parse response coming from an input stream out of a HTTP connection.

As you already know please make sure you use this in a separate thread and not in the UI thread. That's it :)