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<head><title>GNU Classpath - gnu.java.net.protocol.http</title></head>

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<p>
This package contains an HTTP/1.1 client, as described in RFC 2616.
It supports the following features:
<ul>
<li>Persistent connections</li>
<li>Basic and Digest authentication (RFC 2617)</li>
<li>HTTPS</li>
<li>HTTP proxies</li>
<li>HTTP/1.0 compatibility</li>
<li>Support for WebDAV methods and other HTTP extensions</li>
<li>Automatic decoding of the chunked transfer-coding</li>
<li>Parsing of HTTP date headers</li>
<li>Support for the 100-continue expectation</li>
</ul>
</p>

<p>
The API is similar to the <a href='http://www.webdav.org/neon/'>neon</a>
WebDAV/HTTP library. A logical connection to the server is instantiated,
and multiple requests can be issued for this connection. Each request
has an atomic <code>dispatch</code> method which returns the response.
All I/O, authentication, etc is handled by registering callback objects
with the request prior to dispatch, which are notified during the dispatch
procedure as necessary. Simple byte-array content callbacks are supplied
which can manage any request/response content that fits in available memory.
</p>

<p>
An URL stream handler is provided, supporting the full HttpURLConnection
specification.
</p>

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