A Scala REST client using the Apache HttpClient library

A Scala REST client using the Apache HttpClient library

By Alvin Alexander. Last updated: May 4, 2015

After writing a Java REST (RESTful) client using Apache HttpClient, I turned around and modified that code to be a Scala REST client, also using the Apache HttpClient library.

Here then is the source code for a Scala REST client example, which demonstrates how to read information from the Yahoo Weather API, which is actually an RSS feed. As a result, this example also demonstrates how to search an XML document for the information you want, using the built-in Scala XML parsing capabilities.

package tests   import java.io. _ 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 scala.collection.mutable.StringBuilder import scala.xml.XML   object ScalaApacheHttpRestClient {      def main(args : Array[String]) {          // (1) get the content from the yahoo weather api url      val content = getRestContent( "http://weather.yahooapis.com/forecastrss?p=80020&u=f" )            // (2) convert it to xml      val xml = XML.loadString(content)      assert(xml.isInstanceOf[scala.xml.Elem])  // needed?        // (3) search the xml for the nodes i want      val temp = (xml \\ "channel" \\ "item" \ "condition" \ "@temp" ) text      val text = (xml \\ "channel" \\ "item" \ "condition" \ "@text" ) text        // (4) print the results      val currentWeather = format( "The current temperature is %s degrees, and the sky is %s." , temp, text.toLowerCase())      println(currentWeather)    }        /**     * Returns the text content from a REST URL. Returns a blank String if there     * is a problem.     */    def getRestContent(url : String) : String = {      val httpClient = new DefaultHttpClient()      val httpResponse = httpClient.execute( new HttpGet(url))      val entity = httpResponse.getEntity()      var content = ""      if (entity ! = null ) {        val inputStream = entity.getContent()        content = io.Source.fromInputStream(inputStream).getLines.mkString        inputStream.close      }      httpClient.getConnectionManager().shutdown()      return content    }   }

Description

As you can see from the main method, the code is pretty simple, only involving a few steps. The getRestContent function does a lot of the dirty work involved in getting the content from a REST URL. (That function can probably be written better, as I'm ignoring a number of exceptions that can happen.)

There is also some magic involved in processing the XML using the Scala XML library. It took me longer to figure out the syntax to search the XML for the nodes I wanted than it did to write the rest of this example, so I'll discuss that Scala XML syntax in another tutorial.

As I mentioned in my earlier Java RESTful client example, there are several other good ways of creating REST clients in Java and Scala, including using the Jersey project, or the Apache CXF project. Those libraries are specifically geared more towards web services and implementing the API of the Java JSRs that describe web services, while the Apache HttpClient library just simplifies the process of creating HTTP clients. Which one you use is up to you, and I hope/plan to write RESTful clients in Scala using each of those libraries.

In trying to keep this short, I'll leave the example and discussion at that. As usual, if you have any questions, comments, or improvements, just leave a note in the comments section below.