Submit Form with Java 11 HttpClient - Kotlin

Upasana | June 10, 2020 | 2 min read | 0 views

In this article we will show how to submit a URL encoded form using Java 11 HttpClient Api in sync as well as async fully non-blocking mode using Kotlin.

Java HttpClient does not have built-in support to send a POST request with x-www-form-urlencoded, but we can easily add this feature using few lines of code.

Java 11 HttpClient

We will create a simple httpClient with some default configuration and use this client to make a POST request.

HttpClient Post request

fun main() {
    val httpClient = HttpClient.newBuilder()
            .version(HttpClient.Version.HTTP_2)
            .connectTimeout(Duration.ofSeconds(15))
            .followRedirects(HttpClient.Redirect.NORMAL)
            .build()

    // form parameters
    val data: MutableMap<Any, Any> = HashMap()
    data["username"] = "<username>"
    data["password"] = "<password>"

    val request = HttpRequest.newBuilder()
            .POST(ofFormData(data)) (2)
            .uri(URI.create("http://example.com"))
            .setHeader("User-Agent", "Espion Bot")
            .header("Content-Type", "application/x-www-form-urlencoded")    (1)
            .build()

    val response = httpClient.send(request, HttpResponse.BodyHandlers.ofString())
    // print status code & body
    println(response.statusCode())
    println(response.body())
}

1	Setting Content-Type to `application/x-www-form-urlencoded` is crucial here
2	Utility method that converts form params to `x-www-form-urlencoded` String

Formdata (x-www-form-urlencoded)

We will create a simple utility method that takes a Map of key/value pair and converts it to a String that is sable for use as an application/x-www-form-urlencoded

Utility method to convert Map to x-www-form-urlencoded String

fun ofFormData(data: Map<Any, Any>): HttpRequest.BodyPublisher? {
    val result = StringBuilder()
    for ((key, value) in data) {
        if (result.isNotEmpty()) {
            result.append("&")
        }
        val encodedName = URLEncoder.encode(key.toString(), StandardCharsets.UTF_8)
        val encodedValue = URLEncoder.encode(value.toString(), StandardCharsets.UTF_8)
        result.append(encodedName)
        if (encodedValue != null) { (1)
            result.append("=")
            result.append(encodedValue)
        }
    }
    return HttpRequest.BodyPublishers.ofString(result.toString())
}