How to send PUT, DELETE HTTP request in HttpURLConnection?

Question

To perform an HTTP PUT:

URL url = new URL("http://www.example.com/resource");
HttpURLConnection httpCon = (HttpURLConnection) url.openConnection();
httpCon.setDoOutput(true);
httpCon.setRequestMethod("PUT");
OutputStreamWriter out = new OutputStreamWriter(
    httpCon.getOutputStream());
out.write("Resource content");
out.close();
httpCon.getInputStream();

To perform an HTTP DELETE:

URL url = new URL("http://www.example.com/resource");
HttpURLConnection httpCon = (HttpURLConnection) url.openConnection();
httpCon.setDoOutput(true);
httpCon.setRequestProperty(
    "Content-Type", "application/x-www-form-urlencoded" );
httpCon.setRequestMethod("DELETE");
httpCon.connect();

This is how it worked for me:

HttpURLConnection connection = (HttpURLConnection) url.openConnection();
connection.setRequestMethod("DELETE");
int responseCode = connection.getResponseCode();

public  HttpURLConnection getHttpConnection(String url, String type){
        URL uri = null;
        HttpURLConnection con = null;
        try{
            uri = new URL(url);
            con = (HttpURLConnection) uri.openConnection();
            con.setRequestMethod(type); //type: POST, PUT, DELETE, GET
            con.setDoOutput(true);
            con.setDoInput(true);
            con.setConnectTimeout(60000); //60 secs
            con.setReadTimeout(60000); //60 secs
            con.setRequestProperty("Accept-Encoding", "Your Encoding");
            con.setRequestProperty("Content-Type", "Your Encoding");
        }catch(Exception e){
            logger.info( "connection i/o failed" );
        }
        return con;
}

Then in your code :

public void yourmethod(String url, String type, String reqbody){
    HttpURLConnection con = null;
    String result = null;
    try {
        con = conUtil.getHttpConnection( url , type);
    //you can add any request body here if you want to post
         if( reqbody != null){  
                con.setDoInput(true);
                con.setDoOutput(true);
                DataOutputStream out = new  DataOutputStream(con.getOutputStream());
                out.writeBytes(reqbody);
                out.flush();
                out.close();
            }
        con.connect();
        BufferedReader in = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(con.getInputStream()));
        String temp = null;
        StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
        while((temp = in.readLine()) != null){
            sb.append(temp).append(" ");
        }
        result = sb.toString();
        in.close();
    } catch (IOException e) {
        // TODO Auto-generated catch block
        e.printStackTrace();
        logger.error(e.getMessage());
    }
//result is the response you get from the remote side
}

I agree with @adietisheim and the rest of people that suggest HttpClient.

I spent time trying to make a simple call to rest service with HttpURLConnection and it hadn't convinced me and after that I tried with HttpClient and it was really more easy, understandable and nice.

An example of code to make a put http call is as follows:

DefaultHttpClient httpClient = new DefaultHttpClient();

HttpPut putRequest = new HttpPut(URI);

StringEntity input = new StringEntity(XML);
input.setContentType(CONTENT_TYPE);

putRequest.setEntity(input);
HttpResponse response = httpClient.execute(putRequest);

UrlConnection is an awkward API to work with. HttpClient is by far the better API and it'll spare you from loosing time searching how to achieve certain things like this stackoverflow question illustrates perfectly. I write this after having used the jdk HttpUrlConnection in several REST clients. Furthermore when it comes to scalability features (like threadpools, connection pools etc.) HttpClient is superior

For doing a PUT in HTML correctly, you will have to surround it with try/catch:

try {
    url = new URL("http://www.example.com/resource");
    HttpURLConnection httpCon = (HttpURLConnection) url.openConnection();
    httpCon.setDoOutput(true);
    httpCon.setRequestMethod("PUT");
    OutputStreamWriter out = new OutputStreamWriter(
        httpCon.getOutputStream());
    out.write("Resource content");
    out.close();
    httpCon.getInputStream();
} catch (MalformedURLException e) {
    e.printStackTrace();
} catch (ProtocolException e) {
    e.printStackTrace();
} catch (IOException e) {
    e.printStackTrace();
}