Java 11 and 12 – New Features

Creating an HttpClient instance

You can create an instance of HttpClient in two ways: by using its static getHttpClient() method, or by using the newBuilder() method (this follows the builder pattern).

The static getHttpClient() method returns a HttpClient instance with basic or default settings, as follows:

HttpClient client = HttpClient.newHttpClient(); 

To add custom settings, you can use its newBuilder() method, which follows the builder design pattern and calls relevant methods. Let's start with a basic version, and then add to it. For example, you can use the following code to set the HTTP version as 2:

HttpClient client = HttpClient.builder(). 
                     .version(Version.HTTP_2) 
                     .build(); 

If HTTP/2 protocol is not supported, the HttpClient