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Android Build a Blog Reader Android App Getting Data from the Web Moving Work from the Main Thread to an AsyncTask

Martin Turjak
Martin Turjak
3,062 Points
Posted by Martin Turjak
Martin Turjak
3,062 Points

Query string removed from the url in HttpUrlConnection connection after any get method called

I noticed that using the code provided in the Android Blog Reader App tutorials (no matter what url I set in the URL string) the query string in HttpUrlConnection connection gets lost after any "get" method gets called on it. Let me show you what I get while debugging (inside the doInBackground method):

URL blogFeedUrl = new URL("http://blog.teamtreehouse.com/api/get_recent_summary/?count=20");
HttpURLConnection connection = (HttpURLConnection) blogFeedUrl.openConnection();
connection.connect();

If I set a breakpoint here and look into the connection the url is still the same as set above, i.e. the query string is count=20. But if we resume the execution and get past this:

responseCode = connection.getResponseCode();

the query string gets set to null so the url gets reset to "http://blog.teamtreehouse.com/api/get_recent_summary/" (which in this case results in the default count of 10 posts). The question is ... am I doing something obvious wrong ... or is it some kind of bug (as I have read that HttpURLConnection was, at least some time ago, considered quite buggy)?

Android Studio (Beta) 0.8.9
Build #AI-135.1404660, built Sep 3, 2014
JRE: 1.6.0_65-b14-462-11M4609 x86_64
JVM: Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM

1 Answer

Martin Turjak
Martin Turjak
3,062 Points
Martin Turjak
Martin Turjak
3,062 Points

Playing with it a bit more I found that using the DefaultHttpClient and HttpGet you can get around the problem. So I get the expected behavior if I substitute the `` method from the tutorial with this:

@Override
protected String doInBackground(Object... atr0) {
    int responseCode = -1;
    JSONObject jsonResponse = null;
    StringBuilder builder = new StringBuilder();
    HttpClient client = new DefaultHttpClient();
    HttpGet httpget = new HttpGet("http://blog.teamtreehouse.com/api/get_recent_summary/?count=20");

    try {
        HttpResponse response = client.execute(httpget);
        StatusLine statusLine = response.getStatusLine();
        responseCode = statusLine.getStatusCode();

        if (responseCode == HttpURLConnection.HTTP_OK) {
            HttpEntity entity = response.getEntity();
            InputStream content = entity.getContent();
            BufferedReader reader = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(content));
            String line;
            while((line = reader.readLine()) != null){
                builder.append(line);
            }

            jsonResponse = new JSONObject(builder.toString());

            JSONArray jsonPosts = jsonResponse.getJSONArray("posts");
            for(int i=0; i<jsonPosts.length(); i++) {
                JSONObject jsonPost = jsonPosts.getJSONObject(i);
                String title = jsonPost.getString("title");
                Log.v(TAG, "Post " + i + ": " + title);
            }

        }
        else {
            Log.i(TAG, String.format("Unsuccessful HTTP response code: %d", responseCode));
        }
    }
    catch (JSONException e) {
        Log.e(TAG, "Exception Caught", e);
    }
    catch (Exception e) {
        Log.e(TAG, "Exception Caught", e);
    }

    return "Code: " + responseCode;
}

This is adopted after this answer by Ben Jakuben (+ adjustment of imports required), to fit the examples in Stage 3 of the Blog Reader App Course.

This gives the expected output. However, if anyone knows what causes my problem in the original code - any insight would be much appreciated.