Create HttpClientModule to handle HTTP request from another web server

[panzhangwang]

No description provided.

[ldaley]

Can you add some more detail about what you want to do please.

[panzhangwang]

I need write HttpClient to talk a remote server from Ratpack. I think it is a decent way to have it in Ratpack core. Otherwise, I could make use of HttpComponents, http://hc.apache.org/httpcomponents-client-ga/

[ldaley]

I'm not sure about having it in the core. Ratpack is never going to have every feature as it's intended to be light.

It might happen one day, but it's pretty far down on the list of priorities so isn't likely to happen anytime soon. You might be better rolling your own.

There's not that much Ratpack integration that you'll need. You'll really just want to pack it up in Guice module.

Also, you may want to look at http://vertx.io as it provides this out of the box.

[panzhangwang]

Agree. However, after introducing Vert.x jar, my app goes fat. My code as below:

def client = Vertx.newVertx().createHttpClient()
def req = client.post('/post', { resp ->
body = new Buffer()
resp.dataHandler { d ->
body << d
}
esp.endHandler {
response.send "application/json", toJson("")
}
})

FYI. It is a common case to have HTTP/Rest client for integration purpose because every RESTful app wants to stay cool and thin. Some of tools are below:

1. http://vertx.io/api/java/api/org/vertx/java/core/http/HttpClient.html
   pros: aync, Netty
   cons: not light enough, need vert.x core and vert.x lang-groovy
2. https://github.com/AsyncHttpClient/async-http-client
   pros: async, Netty
   cons: no support for groovy closure
3. http://groovy.codehaus.org/HTTP+Builder,
   cons:easy, both sync and async, HttpComponets based
   cons: too much dependencies, groovy 1.8

[ldaley]

I originally meant that you could use Vertx instead of Ratpack entirely.

Might be worth checking out: https://github.com/jwagenleitner/groovy-wslite

I'm starting to think it might be worth looking into something in core at some point, so the event loop can be shared. This is only really a concern in very high scale apps though.

[panzhangwang]

I like chain of handlers in Ratpack and I may use Ratpack on the front end and has some request to redirect to backend applications, say Grails. So, I would see the possibility to have Ratpack as a client.

[msgilligan]

Wouldn't it be a good idea for any outbound HTTP requests to be made with Netty? Is there a Netty lib that could be used for this?

[ldaley]

There aren't any practically usable http clients built on Netty. Netty is too low level to use as a general purpose API client.

[ldaley]

Superseded by #217.