Class HttpExchange

java.lang.Object
com.sun.net.httpserver.HttpExchange
All Implemented Interfaces:
Request, AutoCloseable
Direct Known Subclasses:
HttpsExchange
public abstract class HttpExchange extends Object implements AutoCloseable, Request
This class encapsulates a HTTP request received and a response to be generated in one exchange. It provides methods for examining the request from the client, and for building and sending the response.

The typical life-cycle of a HttpExchange is shown in the sequence below:

  1. getRequestMethod() to determine the command.
  2. getRequestHeaders() to examine the request headers (if needed).
  3. getRequestBody() returns an InputStream for reading the request body. After reading the request body, the stream should be closed.
  4. getResponseHeaders() to set any response headers, except content-length.
  5. sendResponseHeaders(int,long) to send the response headers. Must be called before next step.
  6. getResponseBody() to get a OutputStream to send the response body. When the response body has been written, the stream must be closed to terminate the exchange.
Terminating exchanges
Exchanges are terminated when both the request InputStream and response OutputStream are closed. Closing the OutputStream, implicitly closes the InputStream (if it is not already closed). However, it is recommended to consume all the data from the InputStream before closing it. The convenience method close() does all of these tasks. Closing an exchange without consuming all of the request body is not an error but may make the underlying TCP connection unusable for following exchanges. The effect of failing to terminate an exchange is undefined, but will typically result in resources failing to be freed/reused.
Since:
1.6

  • Constructor Details

    • HttpExchange

      protected HttpExchange()
      Constructor for subclasses to call.

  • Method Details

    • getRequestHeaders

      public abstract Headers getRequestHeaders()
      Returns an immutable Headers containing the HTTP headers that were included with this request.

      The keys in this Headers are the header names, while the values are a List of Strings containing each value that was included in the request, in the order they were included. Header fields appearing multiple times are represented as multiple string values.

      The keys in Headers are case-insensitive.

      Specified by:
      getRequestHeaders in interface Request
      Returns:
      a read-only Headers which can be used to access request headers.

    • getResponseHeaders

      public abstract Headers getResponseHeaders()
      Returns a mutable Headers into which the HTTP response headers can be stored and which will be transmitted as part of this response.

      The keys in the Headers are the header names, while the values must be a List of Strings containing each value that should be included multiple times (in the order that they should be included).

      The keys in Headers are case-insensitive.

      Returns:
      a writable Headers which can be used to set response headers.

    • getRequestURI

      public abstract URI getRequestURI()
      Returns the request URI.
      Specified by:
      getRequestURI in interface Request
      Returns:
      the request URI

    • getRequestMethod

      public abstract String getRequestMethod()
      Returns the request method.
      Specified by:
      getRequestMethod in interface Request
      Returns:
      the request method string

    • getHttpContext

      public abstract HttpContext getHttpContext()
      Returns the HttpContext for this exchange.
      Returns:
      the HttpContext

    • close

      public abstract void close()
      Ends this exchange by doing the following in sequence:
      1. close the request InputStream, if not already closed.
      2. close the response OutputStream, if not already closed.
      Specified by:
      close in interface AutoCloseable

    • getRequestBody

      public abstract InputStream getRequestBody()
      Returns a stream from which the request body can be read. Multiple calls to this method will return the same stream. It is recommended that applications should consume (read) all of the data from this stream before closing it. If a stream is closed before all data has been read, then the InputStream.close() call will read and discard remaining data (up to an implementation specific number of bytes).
      Returns:
      the stream from which the request body can be read

    • getResponseBody

      public abstract OutputStream getResponseBody()
      Returns a stream to which the response body must be written. sendResponseHeaders(int,long)) must be called prior to calling this method. Multiple calls to this method (for the same exchange) will return the same stream. In order to correctly terminate each exchange, the output stream must be closed, even if no response body is being sent.

      Closing this stream implicitly closes the InputStream returned from getRequestBody() (if it is not already closed).

      If the call to sendResponseHeaders(int, long) specified a fixed response body length, then the exact number of bytes specified in that call must be written to this stream. If too many bytes are written, then the write method of OutputStream will throw an IOException. If too few bytes are written then the stream OutputStream.close() will throw an IOException. In both cases, the exchange is aborted and the underlying TCP connection closed.

      Returns:
      the stream to which the response body is written

    • sendResponseHeaders

      public abstract void sendResponseHeaders(int rCode, long responseLength) throws IOException
      Starts sending the response back to the client using the current set of response headers and the numeric response code as specified in this method. The response body length is also specified as follows. If the response length parameter is greater than zero, this specifies an exact number of bytes to send and the application must send that exact amount of data. If the response length parameter is zero, then chunked transfer encoding is used and an arbitrary amount of data may be sent. The application terminates the response body by closing the OutputStream. If response length has the value -1 then no response body is being sent.

      If the content-length response header has not already been set then this is set to the appropriate value depending on the response length parameter.

      This method must be called prior to calling getResponseBody().

      Implementation Note:
      This implementation allows the caller to instruct the server to force a connection close after the exchange terminates, by supplying a Connection: close header to the response headers before sendResponseHeaders is called.
      Parameters:
      rCode - the response code to send
      responseLength - if > 0, specifies a fixed response body length and that exact number of bytes must be written to the stream acquired from getResponseCode() If == 0, then chunked encoding is used, and an arbitrary number of bytes may be written. If <= -1, then no response body length is specified and no response body may be written.
      Throws:
      IOException - if the response headers have already been sent or an I/O error occurs
      See Also:

    • getRemoteAddress

      public abstract InetSocketAddress getRemoteAddress()
      Returns the address of the remote entity invoking this request.
      Returns:
      the InetSocketAddress of the caller

    • getResponseCode

      public abstract int getResponseCode()
      Returns the response code, if it has already been set.
      Returns:
      the response code, if available. -1 if not available yet.

    • getLocalAddress

      public abstract InetSocketAddress getLocalAddress()
      Returns the local address on which the request was received.
      Returns:
      the InetSocketAddress of the local interface

    • getProtocol

      public abstract String getProtocol()
      Returns the protocol string from the request in the form protocol/majorVersion.minorVersion. For example, "HTTP/1.1".
      Returns:
      the protocol string from the request

    • getAttribute

      public abstract Object getAttribute(String name)
      Returns the attribute's value from this exchange's context attributes.
      API Note:
      Filter modules may store arbitrary objects as attributes through HttpExchange instances as an out-of-band communication mechanism. Other filters or the exchange handler may then access these objects.

      Each Filter class will document the attributes which they make available.

      Parameters:
      name - the name of the attribute to retrieve
      Returns:
      the attribute's value or null if either the attribute isn't set or the attribute value is null
      Throws:
      NullPointerException - if name is null

    • setAttribute

      public abstract void setAttribute(String name, Object value)
      Sets an attribute with the given name and value in this exchange's context attributes.
      API Note:
      Filter modules may store arbitrary objects as attributes through HttpExchange instances as an out-of-band communication mechanism. Other filters or the exchange handler may then access these objects.

      Each Filter class will document the attributes which they make available.

      Parameters:
      name - the name to associate with the attribute value
      value - the object to store as the attribute value. null value is permitted.
      Throws:
      NullPointerException - if name is null

    • setStreams

      public abstract void setStreams(InputStream i, OutputStream o)
      Used by Filters to wrap either (or both) of this exchange's InputStream and OutputStream, with the given filtered streams so that subsequent calls to getRequestBody() will return the given InputStream, and calls to getResponseBody() will return the given OutputStream. The streams provided to this call must wrap the original streams, and may be (but are not required to be) sub-classes of FilterInputStream and FilterOutputStream.
      Parameters:
      i - the filtered input stream to set as this object's Inputstream, or null if no change
      o - the filtered output stream to set as this object's Outputstream, or null if no change

    • getPrincipal

      public abstract HttpPrincipal getPrincipal()
      If an authenticator is set on the HttpContext that owns this exchange, then this method will return the HttpPrincipal that represents the authenticated user for this HttpExchange.
      Returns:
      the HttpPrincipal, or null if no authenticator is set