"Although the java.net package provides basic functionality for accessing resources via HTTP," said Oleg Kalnichevski as the Jakarta Apache Project today released HTTPClient 3.1, "it doesn't provide the full flexibility or functionality needed by many applications. The Jakarta Commons HttpClient component seeks to fill this void by providing an efficient, up-to-date, and feature-rich package implementing the client side of the most recent HTTP standards and recommendations."

Version 3.1 "finalizes support for the RFC 2965 cookie management (also known as Cookie2 or port sensitive cookies) and adds a number of improvements to the HTTP connection management," Kalnichevski added.

HttpClient 3.1 is likely to be the last non-bug fixing release of the HttpClient 3.x codeline, he noted.

Features include:

• GET, POST, PUT, DELETE, HEAD, OPTIONS, and TRACE
• HTTPS (HTTP over SSL)
• HTTP proxies
• Tunneled HTTPS connections through HTTP proxies, via the CONNECT method.
• Transparent connections through SOCKS proxies (version 4 & 5) using native Java socket support.
• Basic, Digest, encrypting NTLM (NT Lan Manager), and pluggable custom authentication
• Multi-Part form POST
• "Connection management support for use in multi-threaded applications. Supports setting the maximum total connections as well as the maximum connections per host. Detects and closes stale connections."
• Cookies
• KeepAlive in HTTP/1.0 and persistence in HTTP/1.1
• Connection timeouts