Step 1: Define the URL
Before we can connect to a web server, we need to specify the URL of the server we want to interact with. This URL should point to the resource we want to access, such as a website, API endpoint, or web service. In our example, we'll use "https://www.example.com/" as a placeholder URL, but you should replace it with the URL of your choice.
Step 2: Create a URL Object
In Java, we use the URL class to work with URLs. We create a URL object by passing the URL string as a parameter to the URL constructor. This object represents the URL we want to connect to.
Step 3: Open a Connection
To establish a connection to the web server, we use the 'HttpURLConnection' class, which provides HTTP-specific functionality. We call the 'openConnection()' method on our URL object to open a connection. We then cast the returned connection to 'HttpURLConnection' for HTTP-related operations.
Step 4: Set the Request Method
HTTP requests have different methods, such as GET, POST, PUT, and DELETE. In this example, we're making a GET request to retrieve data from the server. We set the request method to "GET" using the 'setRequestMethod("GET")' method on the 'HttpURLConnection' object.
Step 5: Get the Response Code
To check the status of our request, we obtain the HTTP response code using the 'getResponseCode()' method. The response code indicates whether the request was successful or if there were any issues.
Step 6: Read and Display Response Content
To retrieve and display the content returned by the web server, we create a 'BufferedReader' to read the response content line by line. We append each line to a 'StringBuilder' to construct the complete response content. Finally, we print the response content to the console.