About RawHTTP
Motivation
RawHTTP was created by Renato Athaydes after he realized just how complex Java HTTP clients and servers were, when in reality, HTTP itself is pretty simple.
Imagine that you just wanted to fire up a little microservice with a couple of REST endpoints.
One of the “simplest” Java server micro-frameworks around, SparkJava, lets you do that, but it takes all of these things with it:
\--- com.sparkjava:spark-core:2.7.1
+--- org.slf4j:slf4j-api:1.7.13
+--- org.eclipse.jetty:jetty-server:9.4.6.v20170531
| +--- javax.servlet:javax.servlet-api:3.1.0
| +--- org.eclipse.jetty:jetty-http:9.4.6.v20170531
| | +--- org.eclipse.jetty:jetty-util:9.4.6.v20170531
| | \--- org.eclipse.jetty:jetty-io:9.4.6.v20170531
| | \--- org.eclipse.jetty:jetty-util:9.4.6.v20170531
| \--- org.eclipse.jetty:jetty-io:9.4.6.v20170531 (*)
+--- org.eclipse.jetty:jetty-webapp:9.4.6.v20170531
| +--- org.eclipse.jetty:jetty-xml:9.4.6.v20170531
| | \--- org.eclipse.jetty:jetty-util:9.4.6.v20170531
| \--- org.eclipse.jetty:jetty-servlet:9.4.6.v20170531
| \--- org.eclipse.jetty:jetty-security:9.4.6.v20170531
| \--- org.eclipse.jetty:jetty-server:9.4.6.v20170531 (*)
+--- org.eclipse.jetty.websocket:websocket-server:9.4.6.v20170531
| +--- org.eclipse.jetty.websocket:websocket-common:9.4.6.v20170531
| | +--- org.eclipse.jetty.websocket:websocket-api:9.4.6.v20170531
| | +--- org.eclipse.jetty:jetty-util:9.4.6.v20170531
| | \--- org.eclipse.jetty:jetty-io:9.4.6.v20170531 (*)
| +--- org.eclipse.jetty.websocket:websocket-client:9.4.6.v20170531
| | +--- org.eclipse.jetty:jetty-util:9.4.6.v20170531
| | +--- org.eclipse.jetty:jetty-io:9.4.6.v20170531 (*)
| | +--- org.eclipse.jetty:jetty-client:9.4.6.v20170531
| | | +--- org.eclipse.jetty:jetty-http:9.4.6.v20170531 (*)
| | | \--- org.eclipse.jetty:jetty-io:9.4.6.v20170531 (*)
| | \--- org.eclipse.jetty.websocket:websocket-common:9.4.6.v20170531 (*)
| +--- org.eclipse.jetty.websocket:websocket-servlet:9.4.6.v20170531
| | +--- org.eclipse.jetty.websocket:websocket-api:9.4.6.v20170531
| | \--- javax.servlet:javax.servlet-api:3.1.0
| +--- org.eclipse.jetty:jetty-servlet:9.4.6.v20170531 (*)
| \--- org.eclipse.jetty:jetty-http:9.4.6.v20170531 (*)
\--- org.eclipse.jetty.websocket:websocket-servlet:9.4.6.v20170531 (*)
Now you need to understand what all these dependencies are doing if you really want to know how your little microservice actually works.
If you look at Spring Boot or Dropwizard, things are worse still.
HTTP clients may not be as complex, but they tend to be difficult to learn and use when compared to plain (or, let’s say, raw) HTTP.
Why RawHTTP
RawHTTP has ZERO dependencies and should be trivial to learn.
You have 100% control of what your server or client should do. No magic!
Of course, RawHTTP is not a full package, and it doesn’t try to be. It just gives you an easy-to-use API to implement your own HTTP clients and servers.
Want to convert your POJOs to JSON or XML before sending it to a client?
Well, just use Gson or
your favourite XML parser to convert the POJO into bytes, put those bytes into a HTTP response,
then write that to a Socket:
RawHttp http = new RawHttp();
RawHttpResponse<?> response = http.parseResponse("200 OK");
response.withBody(
new BytesBody(bytes, "application/json")
).writeTo(socket);
Need to send a GET request to fetch some JSON from your API?
RawHttp http = new RawHttp();
RawHttpRequest request = http.parseRequest(
"GET https://example.com/my-resource/123\n" +
"Accept: application/json");
RawHttpResponse<?> response =
new TcpRawHttpClient().send(request);
You can even copy-paste a sample HTTP request from the API docs and send it out as-is.
The RawHTTP API was designed to make it intuitive to use and allow all behaviour to be easily customized.
All objects are immutable, so mutator methods always return a new object rather than change the receiver. This is done very efficiently, so performance is not compromised.
Check RawHTTP in 5 minutes for a quick overview, or head to the documentation for more details.
Source code
RawHTTP is on GitHub.