[rest] Groovy built-in REST/HTTP client?

I heard that Groovy has a built-in REST/HTTP client. The only library I can find is HttpBuilder, is this it?

Basically I'm looking for a way to do HTTP GETs from inside Groovy code without having to import any libraries (if at all possible). But since this module doesn't appear to be a part of core Groovy I'm not sure if I have the right lib here.

HTTPBuilder is it. Very easy to use.

import groovyx.net.http.HTTPBuilder

def http = new HTTPBuilder('https://google.com')
def html = http.get(path : '/search', query : [q:'waffles'])

It is especially useful if you need error handling and generally more functionality than just fetching content with GET.

Native Groovy GET and POST

// GET
def get = new URL("https://httpbin.org/get").openConnection();
def getRC = get.getResponseCode();
println(getRC);
if(getRC.equals(200)) {
    println(get.getInputStream().getText());
}

// POST
def post = new URL("https://httpbin.org/post").openConnection();
def message = '{"message":"this is a message"}'
post.setRequestMethod("POST")
post.setDoOutput(true)
post.setRequestProperty("Content-Type", "application/json")
post.getOutputStream().write(message.getBytes("UTF-8"));
def postRC = post.getResponseCode();
println(postRC);
if(postRC.equals(200)) {
    println(post.getInputStream().getText());
}

If your needs are simple and you want to avoid adding additional dependencies you may be able to use the getText() methods that Groovy adds to the java.net.URL class:

new URL("http://stackoverflow.com").getText()

// or

new URL("http://stackoverflow.com")
        .getText(connectTimeout: 5000, 
                readTimeout: 10000, 
                useCaches: true, 
                allowUserInteraction: false, 
                requestProperties: ['Connection': 'close'])

If you are expecting binary data back there is also similar functionality provided by the newInputStream() methods.

You can take advantage of Groovy features like with(), improvements to URLConnection, and simplified getters/setters:

GET:

String getResult = new URL('http://mytestsite/bloop').text

POST:

String postResult
((HttpURLConnection)new URL('http://mytestsite/bloop').openConnection()).with({
    requestMethod = 'POST'
    doOutput = true
    setRequestProperty('Content-Type', '...') // Set your content type.
    outputStream.withPrintWriter({printWriter ->
        printWriter.write('...') // Your post data. Could also use withWriter() if you don't want to write a String.
    })
    // Can check 'responseCode' here if you like.
    postResult = inputStream.text // Using 'inputStream.text' because 'content' will throw an exception when empty.
})

Note, the POST will start when you try to read a value from the HttpURLConnection, such as responseCode, inputStream.text, or getHeaderField('...').

import groovyx.net.http.HTTPBuilder;

public class HttpclassgetrRoles {
     static void main(String[] args){
         def baseUrl = new URL('http://test.city.com/api/Cirtxyz/GetUser')

         HttpURLConnection connection = (HttpURLConnection) baseUrl.openConnection();
         connection.addRequestProperty("Accept", "application/json")
         connection.with {
           doOutput = true
           requestMethod = 'GET'
           println content.text
         }

     }
}

I don't think http-builder is a Groovy module, but rather an external API on top of apache http-client so you do need to import classes and download a bunch of APIs. You are better using Gradle or @Grab to download the jar and dependencies:

@Grab(group='org.codehaus.groovy.modules.http-builder', module='http-builder', version='0.7.1' )
import groovyx.net.http.*
import static groovyx.net.http.ContentType.*
import static groovyx.net.http.Method.*

Note: since the CodeHaus site went down, you can find the JAR at (https://mvnrepository.com/artifact/org.codehaus.groovy.modules.http-builder/http-builder)

The simplest one got to be:

def html = "http://google.com".toURL().text