How-to: Android as a RESTful Client

This is a how-to focused on creating a RESTful java object at Android. I’ve used HTTPClient, HTTPEntry, HTTPGet, HTTPResponse, JSONArray and JSONObject classes. I think it’ll be useful if we need to use a web-service from client application.

I’ve implemented a simple Java Object called RestClient which connects to a given Rest-JSON service. After connection, this object prints response content. Using this content, a JSONObject created. Then, RestClient prints the JSONObject’s content, parses all values of this object and prints them as well. And as a last job, RestClient pushes a sample value to the JSONObject.
I’ve uploaded RestClient. Hope it’ll be useful.
P.s: To get access to internet at Android, following field must be included to AndroidManifest.xml file of the project.

<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.INTERNET"></uses-permission>

package praeda.muzikmekan;
 
import java.io.BufferedReader;
import java.io.IOException;
import java.io.InputStream;
import java.io.InputStreamReader;
 
import org.apache.http.HttpEntity;
import org.apache.http.HttpResponse;
import org.apache.http.client.ClientProtocolException;
import org.apache.http.client.HttpClient;
import org.apache.http.client.methods.HttpGet;
import org.apache.http.impl.client.DefaultHttpClient;
import org.json.JSONArray;
import org.json.JSONException;
import org.json.JSONObject;
 
import android.util.Log;
 
public class RestClient {
 
    private static String convertStreamToString(InputStream is) {
        /*
         * To convert the InputStream to String we use the BufferedReader.readLine()
         * method. We iterate until the BufferedReader return null which means
         * there's no more data to read. Each line will appended to a StringBuilder
         * and returned as String.
         */
        BufferedReader reader = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(is));
        StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
 
        String line = null;
        try {
            while ((line = reader.readLine()) != null) {
                sb.append(line + "\n");
            }
        } catch (IOException e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        } finally {
            try {
                is.close();
            } catch (IOException e) {
                e.printStackTrace();
            }
        }
        return sb.toString();
    }
 
    /* This is a test function which will connects to a given
     * rest service and prints it's response to Android Log with
     * labels "Praeda".
     */
    public static void connect(String url)
    {
 
        HttpClient httpclient = new DefaultHttpClient();
 
        // Prepare a request object
        HttpGet httpget = new HttpGet(url); 
 
        // Execute the request
        HttpResponse response;
        try {
            response = httpclient.execute(httpget);
            // Examine the response status
            Log.i("Praeda",response.getStatusLine().toString());
 
            // Get hold of the response entity
            HttpEntity entity = response.getEntity();
            // If the response does not enclose an entity, there is no need
            // to worry about connection release
 
            if (entity != null) {
 
                // A Simple JSON Response Read
                InputStream instream = entity.getContent();
                String result= convertStreamToString(instream);
                Log.i("Praeda",result);
 
                // A Simple JSONObject Creation
                JSONObject json=new JSONObject(result);
                Log.i("Praeda","<jsonobject>\n"+json.toString()+"\n</jsonobject>");
 
                // A Simple JSONObject Parsing
                JSONArray nameArray=json.names();
                JSONArray valArray=json.toJSONArray(nameArray);
                for(int i=0;i<valArray.length();i++)
                {
                    Log.i("Praeda","<jsonname"+i+">\n"+nameArray.getString(i)+"\n</jsonname"+i+">\n"
                            +"<jsonvalue"+i+">\n"+valArray.getString(i)+"\n</jsonvalue"+i+">");
                }
 
                // A Simple JSONObject Value Pushing
                json.put("sample key", "sample value");
                Log.i("Praeda","<jsonobject>\n"+json.toString()+"\n</jsonobject>");
 
                // Closing the input stream will trigger connection release
                instream.close();
            }
 
 
        } catch (ClientProtocolException e) {
            // TODO Auto-generated catch block
            e.printStackTrace();
        } catch (IOException e) {
            // TODO Auto-generated catch block
            e.printStackTrace();
        } catch (JSONException e) {
            // TODO Auto-generated catch block
            e.printStackTrace();
        }
    }
 
}