Hello! Some important changes are coming in the newest version of HTTP Builder, and I wanted to get feedback from the community while this is still in development.
I've released an experimental snapshot that includes a prototype REST client API, as well as some breaking changes from 0.4.x. HTTPBuilder is a streamlined HTTP client API built on Apache's robust HttpClient.
First, the good news:
v0.5 will include RESTClient, which aims to make REST operations as pain-free as possible. Whereas HTTPBuilder is optimized to parse streaming response data, RESTClient assumes the response can easily be read into memory. This is how HTTPBuilder's default response handler works currently, but RESTClient goes one step further and provides simplified access to response headers and the parsed data without any inline closure at all.
An Example:
Notice how JSON and XML are used interchangeably, and the response is automatically parsed based on the response content-type header. This API is still in development, so suggestions for improvement are more than welcome!
Now the bad news; breaking changes from 0.4.x...
The main breaking change is that all "url" parameters and named arguments are being changed to "uri." This is mainly because Apache HttpClient uses URIs, not URLs for its operations. So it was inconsistent and misleading to use the term "URL" when in fact, it is a URI. There are a few other minor changes, but they are expected to be low impact. You can see a list of changes for 0.5.0 here.
The HTTPBuilder homepage has not yet been updated, but a snapshot release is available for eager users to test out.
Comments and feedback are welcome. Site documentation should be updated within a week. Enjoy!