11 October 2004 - HttpClient 2.0.2 released

We are pleased to announce the latest stable release of HttpClient, version 2.0.2. This release adds buffering for all reads. In particular this change greatly improves the performance of reading responses with little or no content. Please see the release notes for more detail.

Please download and enjoy.

19 September 2004 - HttpClient 3.0 alpha2 released

We are pleased to announce the final alpha release of HttpClient 3.0. At this point HttpClient is fully feature-complete and is just a few issue reports short of being code and documentation complete. All of the important new features such as the new preferences architecture and exception handling framework are completely documented. We strongly encourage comment and criticism of the current API so we can have everything worked out by the first beta release. Following this release the development effort will focus on stabilizing the 3.0 API and adding more documentation. Depending on on how well this release is received, as well as the quality and quantity of feedback, we are looking at an API freeze in one to two months time.

The preview of the HttpClient 3.0 site can be found here .

Please download and enjoy.

1 August 2004 - HttpClient 2.0.1 released

We are pleased to announce the latest stable release of HttpClient, version 2.0.1. This release contains a few minor bug fixes and enhancements. Please see the release notes for more detail.

Please download and enjoy.

17 May 2004 - HttpClient 3.0 alpha1 released

We are pleased to announce the first HttpClient 3.0 release. HttpClient 3.0 provides a wealth of features and enhancements that did not make it into the 2.0 release, while preserving API compatibility as much as possible. In a relatively few cases API compatibility with HttpClient 2.0 could not maintained.

Noteworthy enhancements include:

  • New preference architecture
  • Improved exception handling framework
  • Granular non-standards configuration and tracking
  • Improved authentication framework
  • Plug-in mechanism for authentication modules
  • Cookie specification plug-in mechanism
  • Cross-site redirect support

We see our fellow Apache developers as well as other open-source projects already reliant on HttpClient as the primary target audience for this release. This is the right time to evaluate HttpClient 3.0 and give us some feedback, critique or other thought on the new API. Please feel free to file requests for additional features.

The goal of the second ALPHA release is to incorporate the feedback, polish the API, and update documentation. The next ALPHA release will target the wider audience beyond the Apache Jakarta and Apache WS communities.

Please download and let us know what you think.

16 April 2004 - Welcome Jakarta HttpClient!

By the count 26 votes in favor, none against, Jakarta Commons HttpClient as been promoted to the Jakarta sub-project level. The move to the Jakarta sub-project level is a next step in HttpClient evolution which will result in many exiting changes and new developments. So, stay tuned.

15 February 2004 - HttpClient 2.0 Final released

At last 2.0 final is upon us. This release represents a great deal of work by quite a number of people. We would like to thank all of those who contributed to this release.

Please download and enjoy.

16 January 2004 - HttpClient 2.0 Release Candidate 3 released

While a final 2.0 release still eludes us, we have continued to make good progress. This release fixes some significant bugs that crept into RC2. Assuming that there are no major bugs found in this release a final release should follow shortly.

13 October 2003 - HttpClient 2.0 Release Candidate 2 released

Releasing a final version of HttpClient 2.0 by the end of Summer 2003, as originally planned, was not possible. There were a significant number of minor bugs reported against RC1. None of them were major, but verifying, fixing, and testing simply took time more time than anticipated. We are pleased to announce the second release candidate of HttpClient 2.0 and hope to follow up with a final release shortly.

At the same time we have been busy working on our next release, currently designated as 2.1. It it shaping up quite well. We already have a new preferences architecture in place that will help us provide greater control over HttpClient without polluting its API with too many options. We have also completely reworked redirect/authentication/retry logic and can now support cross-host redirects, a much complained about limitation of HttpClient 2.0.

1 August 2003 - HttpClient 2.0 Release Candidate 1 released

The HttpClient 2.0 BETA development phase has been concluded. The number of bugs discovered in the course of the BETA development was surprisingly low. We are confident that HttpClient 2.0 has reached the required level of maturity, and we hope to have a final 2.0 release by the end of the Summer.

02 July 2003 - HttpClient 2.0 Beta 2 released

This release contains some minor bug fixes and documentation enhancements. Most likely this will be the final beta release before 2.0 Release Candidate 1. As always thank you to the HttpClient users and developers for their efforts. Please download HttpClient 2.0 Beta 2 and enjoy.

25 May 2003 - HttpClient 2.0 Beta 1 released

This is the first feature-complete release of HttpClient 2.0. A lot of effort has been put into making this release functional, stable and reliable. Many thanks to everyone who contributed code, time and testing. Please download HttpClient 2.0 Beta 1 and enjoy.

Note: The binary distributions were updated on 2 June, 2003 to fix a problem with the original jar's MANIFEST.MF. Using the original HttpClient jar from within a servlet container or J2EE managed environment may have caused some problems.

25 February 2003 - HttpClient 2.0 Alpha 3 released

This is an intermediate alpha release. The build process used in the previous Alpha 2 changed from generating 4 build artifacts to a single distribution. This one zip contains everything: all the source, the binary jar, the logging dependancy, generated javadoc and required build files for Ant builds and JUnit tests.

"One zip to rule them all, one zip to find them, one zip to bring them all and in the darkness bind them"

19 February, 2003 - Welcome new committer Michael Becke

Mike been an active contributor for many months. He has worked on a diverse range of problems with high quality results. In particular he is known for the massive HttpClient/HttpMultiClient merger that took place in December.

Welcome to Middle Earth Mike!

26 January 2003 - new mailing list archives

There are two new mailing list archives of the commons-httpclient-dev mailing list. It looks like someone up there is starting to like us!

25 January 2003 - HttpClient 2.0 Alpha 2 released

After many months and a great resurgence of developers, the new build of HttpClient is finally here. The new group of developers has done extensive refactoring to move the project along the new vision. The code base has reached a significant level of maturity and we expect that the beta builds will come quickly and that the final release of 2.0 is not far away!

Also check out the new HttpClient logo!

21 December, 2002 - Welcome new committer Oleg Kalnichevski

Oleg is the first committer to be voted in on the dedicated httpclient mailing list. Welcome to the fellowship Olegolas!

3 December, 2002 - HttpClient/HttpMultiClient merger

The initial merger of the top level classes HttpClient and HttpMultiClient is complete. Thanks for the patches and hard work from everyone particularly to Michale Becke for supplying the primary patch.

3 October, 2002 - commons-httpclient-dev mailing list

The mailing list was renamed to be commons-httpclient-dev. Sorry for the confusion.

If you wish to subscribe to this new mailing list, you can send mail to commons-httpclient-dev-subscribe@jakarta.apache.org

12 July, 2002 - HttpClient 2.0 Release Planning

The HttpClient project has go through some very active development leading up to Alpha 1 last year, but unfortunately lost momentum shortly after that. There is now renewed interest and greatly increased activity on the dev-commons mailing list. The committers and contributors are working on a new release plan for 2.0.

The 2.0 release plan is expected to be posted to the mailing list for review by July 22, 2002.

5 October, 2001 - HttpClient 2.0 Alpha 1 Released

The HttpClient revision 2.0 alpha 1 is available at http://jakarta.apache.org/builds/jakarta-commons/release/commons-httpclient/v2.0/ .

25 April, 2001 - HttpClient Proposal Accepted

The HttpClient proposal has been accepted by the Jakarta Commons team and the source has been moved into the CVS repository .

18 April, 2001 - HttpClient Proposed

HttpClient, originally developed by the Jakarta Slide team, has been proposed as a Jakarta Commons component.