Fuel (core)

The core package for Fuel. The documentation outlined here touches most subjects and functions but is not exhaustive.

Installation

You can download and install Fuel with Maven and Gradle. The core package has the following dependencies:

• Kotlin -

implementation 'com.github.kittinunf.fuel:fuel:<latest-version>'

Usage

Making Requests

You can make requests using functions on Fuel, a FuelManager instance or the string extensions.

Fuel.get("https://httpbin.org/get")
    .response { request, response, result ->
      println(request)
      println(response)
      val (bytes, error) = result
      if (bytes != null) {
        println("[response bytes] ${String(bytes)}")
      }
  }
 
/*
 * --> GET https://httpbin.org/get
 * "Body : (empty)"
 * "Headers : (0)"
 *
 
 * <-- 200 (https://httpbin.org/get)
 * Response : OK
 * Length : 268
 * Body : ({
 *   "args": {},
 *   "headers": {
 *     "Accept": "text/html, image/gif, image/jpeg, *; q=.2, *\/*; q=.2",
 *     "Connection": "close",
 *     "Host": "httpbin.org",
 *     "User-Agent": "Java/1.8.0_172"
 *   },
 *   "origin": "123.456.789.123",
 *   "url": "https://httpbin.org/get"
 * })
 * Headers : (8)
 * Connection : keep-alive
 * Date : Thu, 15 Nov 2018 00:47:50 GMT
 * Access-Control-Allow-Origin : *
 * Server : gunicorn/19.9.0
 * Content-Type : application/json
 * Content-Length : 268
 * Access-Control-Allow-Credentials : true
 * Via : 1.1 vegur
 
 * [response bytes] {
 *   "args": {},
 *   "headers": {
 *     "Accept": "text/html, image/gif, image/jpeg, *; q=.2, */*; q=.2",
 *     "Connection": "close",
 *     "Host": "httpbin.org",
 *     "User-Agent": "Java/1.8.0_172"
 *   },
 *   "origin": "123.456.789.123",
 *   "url": "https://httpbin.org/get"
 * }
 */

The extensions and functions made available by the core package are listed here:

About PATCH requests

The default client is HttpClient which is a thin wrapper over java.net.HttpUrlConnection. java.net.HttpUrlConnection does not support a PATCH) method. HttpClient converts PATCH requests to a POST request and adds a X-HTTP-Method-Override: PATCH header. While this is a semi-standard industry practice not all APIs are configured to accept this header by default.

Fuel.patch("https://httpbin.org/patch")
    .also { println(it) }
    .response { result -> }
 
/* --> PATCH https://httpbin.org/post
 * "Body : (empty)"
 * "Headers : (1)"
 * Content-Type : application/x-www-form-urlencoded
 */
 
// What is actually sent to the server
 
/* --> POST (https://httpbin.org/post)
 * "Body" : (empty)
 * "Headers : (3)"
 * Accept-Encoding : compress;q=0.5, gzip;q=1.0
 * Content-Type : application/x-www-form-urlencoded
 * X-HTTP-Method-Override : PATCH
 */

Experimental

As of version 1.16.x you can opt-in to forcing a HTTP Method on the java.net.HttpUrlConnnection instance using reflection.

FuelManager.instance.forceMethods = true
 
Fuel.patch("https://httpbin.org/patch")
    .also { println(it) }
    .response { result -> }
 
/* --> PATCH (https://httpbin.org/patch)
 * "Body" : (empty)
 * "Headers : (3)"
 * Accept-Encoding : compress;q=0.5, gzip;q=1.0
 * Content-Type : application/x-www-form-urlencoded
 */

About CONNECT request

Connect is not supported by the Java JVM via the regular HTTP clients, and is therefore not supported.

Adding Parameters

All the String extensions listed above, as well as the Fuel and FuelManager calls accept a parameter parameters: Parameters.

• URL encoded style for GET and DELETE request

Fuel.get("https://httpbin.org/get", listOf("foo" to "foo", "bar" to "bar"))
    .url
// https://httpbin.org/get?foo=foo&bar=bar

Fuel.delete("https://httpbin.org/delete", listOf("foo" to "foo", "bar" to "bar"))
    .url
// https://httpbin.org/delete?foo=foo&bar=bar

• Support x-www-form-urlencoded for PUT, POST and PATCH

Fuel.post("https://httpbin.org/post", listOf("foo" to "foo", "bar" to "bar"))
    .also { println(it.url) }
    .also { println(String(it.body().toByteArray())) }
 
// https://httpbin.org/post
// "foo=foo&bar=bar"

Fuel.put("https://httpbin.org/put", listOf("foo" to "foo", "bar" to "bar"))
    .also { println(it.url) }
    .also { println(String(it.body().toByteArray())) }
 
// https://httpbin.org/put
// "foo=foo&bar=bar"

Parameters with Body

If a request already has a body, the parameters are url-encoded instead. You can remove the handling of parameter encoding by removing the default ParameterEncoder request interceptor from your FuelManager.

Parameters with multipart/form-data

The UploadRequest handles encoding parameters in the body. Therefore by default, parameter encoding is ignored by ParameterEncoder if the content type is multipart/form-data.

Parameters with empty, array, list or null values

All requests can have parameters, regardless of the method.

• a list is encoded as key[]=value1&key[]=value2&…
• an array is encoded as key[]=value1&key[]=value2&…
• an empty string value is encoded as key
• a null value is removed

Adding Request body

Bodies are formed from generic streams, but there are helpers to set it from values that can be turned into streams. It is important to know that, by default, the streams are NOT read into memory until the Request is sent. However, if you pass in an in-memory value such as a ByteArray or String, Fuel uses RepeatableBody, which are kept into memory until the Request is dereferenced.

When you're using the default Client, bodies are supported for:

• POST
• PUT
• PATCH (actually a POST, as noted above)
• DELETE

There are several functions to set a Body for the request. If you are looking for a multipart/form-data upload request, checkout the UploadRequest feature.

Fuel.post("https://httpbin.org/post")
    .body("My Post Body")
    .also { println(it) }
    .response { result -> }
 
/* --> POST https://httpbin.org/post
 * "Body : My Post Body"
 * "Headers : (1)"
 * Content-Type : application/x-www-form-urlencoded
 */

Use application/json

If you don't want to set the application/json header, you can use .jsonBody(value: String) extension to automatically do this for you.

Fuel.post("https://httpbin.org/post")
    .jsonBody("{ \"foo\" : \"bar\" }")
    .also { println(it) }
    .response { result -> }
 
/* --> POST https://httpbin.org/post
 * "Body : { "foo" : "bar" }"
 * "Headers : (1)"
 * Content-Type : application/json
 */

from String

Fuel.post("https://httpbin.org/post")
    .header(Headers.CONTENT_TYPE, "text/plain")
    .body("my body is plain")
    .also { println(it) }
    .response { result -> }
 
/* --> POST https://httpbin.org/post
 * "Body : my body is plain"
 * "Headers : (1)"
 * Content-Type : text/plain
 */

from a File

Fuel.post("https://httpbin.org/post")
    .header(Headers.CONTENT_TYPE, "text/plain")
    .body(File("lipsum.txt"))
    .also { println(it) }
    .response { result -> }
 
/* --> POST https://httpbin.org/post
 * "Body : Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit."
 * "Headers : (1)"
 * Content-Type : text/plain
 */

from a InputStream

val stream = ByteArrayInputStream("source-string-from-string".toByteArray())
 
Fuel.post("https://httpbin.org/post")
    .header(Headers.CONTENT_TYPE, "text/plain")
    .body(stream)
    .also { println(it) }
    .response { result -> }
 
/* --> POST https://httpbin.org/post
 * "Body : source-string-from-string"
 * "Headers : (1)"
 * Content-Type : text/plain
 */

from a lazy source (InputStream)

Fuel always reads the body lazily, which means you can also provide a callback that will return a stream. This is also known as a BodyCallback:

val produceStream = { ByteArrayInputStream("source-string-from-string".toByteArray()) }
 
Fuel.post("https://httpbin.org/post")
    .header(Headers.CONTENT_TYPE, "text/plain")
    .body(produceStream)
    .also { println(it) }
    .response { result -> }
 
/* --> POST https://httpbin.org/post
 * "Body : source-string-from-string"
 * "Headers : (1)"
 * Content-Type : text/plain
 */

Using automatic body redirection

The default redirection interceptor only forwards RepeatableBody, and only if the status code is 307 or 308, as per the RFCs. In order to use a RepeatableBody, pass in a String or ByteArray as body, or explicitely set repeatable = true for the fun body(…) call.

NOTE this loads the entire body into memory, and therefore is not suited for large bodies.

Adding Headers

There are many ways to set, overwrite, remove and append headers. For your convenience, internally used and common header names are attached to the Headers companion and can be accessed (e.g. Headers.CONTENT_TYPE, Headers.ACCEPT, …).

The most common ones are mentioned here:

Reading HeaderValues

(Over)writing HeaderValues

Appending HeaderValues

Note that headers which by the RFC may only have one value are always overwritten, such as Content-Type.

FuelManager base headers vs. Request headers

The baseHeaders set through a FuelManager are only applied to a Request if that request does not have that specific header set yet. There is no appending logic. If you set a header it will overwrite the base value.

Client headers vs. Request headers

Any Client can add, remove or transform HeaderValues before it sends the Request or after it receives the Response. The default Client for example sets TE values.

HeaderValues values are List

Even though some headers can only be set once (and will overwrite even when you try to append), the internal structure is always a list. Before a Request is made, the default Client collapses the multiple values, if allowed by the RFCs, into a single header value delimited by a separator for that header. Headers that can only be set once will use the last value by default and ignore earlier set values.

Adding Authentication

Authentication can be added to a Request using the .authentication() feature.By default, authentication is passed on when using the default redirectResponseInterceptor (which is enabled by default), unless it is redirecting to a different host. You can remove this behaviour by implementing your own redirection logic.

When you call .authentication(), a few extra functions are available. If you call a regular function (e.g. .header()) the extra functions are no longer available, but you can safely call .authentication() again without losing any previous calls.

• Basic authentication

val username = "username"
val password = "abcd1234"
 
Fuel.get("https://httpbin.org/basic-auth/$user/$password")
    .authentication()
    .basic(username, password)
    .response { result -> }

• Bearer authentication

val token = "mytoken"
 
Fuel.get("https://httpbin.org/bearer")
    .authentication()
    .bearer(token)
    .response { result -> }

• Any authentication using a header

Fuel.get("https://httpbin.org/anything")
    .header(Headers.AUTHORIZATION, "Custom secret")
    .response { result -> }

Adding Progress callbacks

Any request supports Progress callbacks when uploading or downloading a body; the Connection header does not support progress (which is the only thing that is sent if there are no bodies).You can have as many progress handlers of each type as you like.

Request progress

Fuel.post("/post")
    .body(/*...*/)
    .requestProgress { readBytes, totalBytes ->
      val progress = readBytes.toFloat() / totalBytes.toFloat() * 100
      println("Bytes uploaded $readBytes / $totalBytes ($progress %)")
    }
    .response { result -> }

Response progress

Fuel.get("/get")
    .responseProgress { readBytes, totalBytes ->
      val progress = readBytes.toFloat() / totalBytes.toFloat() * 100
      println("Bytes downloaded $readBytes / $totalBytes ($progress %)")
    }
    .response { result -> }

Why does totalBytes increase?

Not all source Body or Response Body report their total size. If the size is not known, the current size will be reported. This means that you will constantly get an increasing amount of totalBytes that equals readBytes.

Using multipart/form-data (UploadRequest)

Fuel supports multipart uploads using the .upload() feature. You can turn any Request into a upload request by calling .upload() or call .upload(method = Method.POST) directly onto Fuel / FuelManager.

When you call .upload(), a few extra functions are available. If you call a regular function (e.g. .header()) the extra functions are no longer available, but you can safely call .upload() again without losing any previous calls.

Fuel.upload("/post")
    .add { FileDataPart(File("myfile.json"), name = "fieldname", filename="contents.json") }
    .response { result -> }

DataPart from File

In order to add DataParts that are sources from a File, you can use FileDataPart, which takes a file: File. There are some sane defaults for the field name name: String, and remote file name filename: String, as well as the Content-Type and Content-Disposition fields, but you can override them.

In order to receive a list of files, for example in the field files, use the array notation:

Fuel.upload("/post")
    .add(
        FileDataPart(File("myfile.json"), name = "files[]", filename="contents.json"),
        FileDataPart(File("myfile2.json"), name = "files[]", filename="contents2.json"),
        FileDataPart(File("myfile3.json"), name = "files[]", filename="contents3.json")
    )
    .response { result -> }

Sending multiple files in a single datapart is not supported as it's deprecated by the multipart/form-data RFCs, but to simulate this behaviour, give the same name to multiple parts.

You can use the convenience constructors FileDataPart.from(directory: , filename: , …args) to create a FileDataPart from String arguments.

DataPart from inline content

Sometimes you have some content inline that you want to turn into a DataPart. You can do this with InlineDataPart:

Fuel.upload("/post")
    .add(
        FileDataPart(File("myfile.json"), name = "file", filename="contents.json"),
        InlineDataPart(myInlineContent, name = "metadata", filename="metadata.json", contentType = "application/json")
    )
    .response { result -> }

A filename is not mandatory and is empty by default; the contentType is text/plain by default.

DataPart from InputStream (formely Blob)

You can also add dataparts from arbitrary InputStreams, which you can do using BlobDataPart:

Fuel.upload("/post")
    .add(
        FileDataPart(File("myfile.json"), name = "file", filename="contents.json"),
        BlobDataPart(someInputStream, name = "metadata", filename="metadata.json", contentType = "application/json", contentLength = 555)
    )
    .response { result -> }

If you don't set the contentLength to a positive integer, your entire Request Content-Length will be undeterminable and the default HttpClient will switch to chunked streaming mode with an arbitrary stream buffer size.

Multipart request without a file

Simply don't call add. The parameters are encoded as parts!

val formData = listOf("Email" to "mail@example.com", "Name" to "Joe Smith" )
 
Fuel.upload("/post", param = formData)
    .response { result -> }

Getting a Response

As mentioned before, you can use Fuel both synchronously and a-synchronously, with support for coroutines.

Blocking responses

By default, there are three response functions to get a request synchronously:

The default charset is UTF-8. If you want to implement your own deserializers, scroll down to advanced usage.

Async responses

Add a handler to a blocking function, to make it asynchronous:

The default charset is UTF-8. If you want to implement your own deserializers, scroll down to advanced usage.

Suspended responses

The core package has limited support for coroutines:

When using other packages such as fuel-coroutines, more response/await functions are available.

Response types

• The ResponseResultOf<U> type is a Triple of the Request, Response and a Result<U, FuelError>
• The ResponseOf<U> type is a Triple of the Request, Response and a U; errors are thrown
• The Result<U, FuelError> type is a non-throwing wrapper around U
• The U type doesn't wrap anything; errors are thrown

Handler types

When defining a handler, you can use one of the following for all responseXXX functions that accept a Handler:

This means that you can either choose to unwrap the Result yourself using a ResultHandler or ResponseResultHandler, or define dedicated callbacks in case of success or failure.

Dealing with Result<T, FuelError>

Result is a functional style data structure that represents data that contains result of Success or Failure but not both. It represents the result of an action that can be success (with result) or error.

Working with result is easy:

• You can call [fold] and define a tranformation function for both cases that results in the same return type,
• [destructure] as (data, error) = result because it is just a data class or
• use when checking whether it is Result.Success or Result.Failure

Download response to output (File or OutputStream)

Fuel supports downloading the request Body to a file using the .download() feature. You can turn any Request into a download request by calling .download() or call .download(method = Method.GET) directly onto Fuel / FuelManager.

When you call .download(), a few extra functions are available. If you call a regular function (e.g. .header()) the extra functions are no longer available, but you can safely call .download() again without losing any previous calls.

Fuel.download("https://httpbin.org/bytes/32768")
    .fileDestination { response, url -> File.createTempFile("temp", ".tmp") }
    .progress { readBytes, totalBytes ->
        val progress = readBytes.toFloat() / totalBytes.toFloat() * 100
        println("Bytes downloaded $readBytes / $totalBytes ($progress %)")
    }
    .response { result -> }

The stream variant expects your callback to provide a Pair with both the OutputStream to write too, as well as a callback that gives an InputStream, or raises an error.

• The OutputStream is always closed after the body has been written. Make sure you wrap whatever functionality you need on top of the stream and don't rely on the stream to remain open.
• The () -> InputStream replaces the body after the current body has been written to the OutputStream. It is used to make sure you can also retrieve the body via the response / await method results. If you don't want the body to be readable after downloading it, you have to do two things:
  • use an EmptyDeserializer with await(deserializer) or one of the response(deserializer) variants
  • provide an InputStream callback that throws or returns an empty InputStream.

Cancel an async Request

The response functions called with a handler are async and return a CancellableRequest. These requests expose a few extra functions that can be used to control the Future that should resolve a response:

val request = Fuel.get("https://httpbin.org/get")
  .interrupt { request -> println("${request.url} was interrupted and cancelled") }
  .response { result ->
    // if request is cancelled successfully, response callback will not be called.
    // Interrupt callback (if provided) will be called instead
  }
 
request.cancel() // this will cancel on-going request

If you can't get hold of the CancellableRequest because, for example, you are adding this logic in an Interceptor, a generic Queue, or a ProgressCallback, you can call tryCancel() which returns true if it was cancelled and false otherwise.At this moment blocking requests can not be cancelled.

Advanced Configuration

Request Configuration

• baseHeaders is to manage common HTTP header pairs in format of Map<String, String>.
  • The base headers are only applied if the request does not have those headers set.

FuelManager.instance.baseHeaders = mapOf("Device" to "Android")

• Headers can be added to a request via various methods including

fun header(name: String, value: Any): Request = request.header("foo", "a")
fun header(pairs: Map<String, Any>): Request = request.header(mapOf("foo" to "a"))
fun header(vararg pairs: Pair<String, Any>): Request = request.header("foo" to "a")
 
operator fun set(header: String, value: Collection<Any>): Request = request["foo"] = listOf("a", "b")
operator fun set(header: String, value: Any): Request = request["foo"] = "a"

• By default, all subsequent calls overwrite earlier calls, but you may use the appendHeader variant to append values to existing values.
  • In earlier versions (1.x.y), a mapOf overwrote, and varargs pair did not, but this was confusing. In 2.0, this issue has been fixed and improved so it works as expected.

fun appendHeader(header: String, value: Any): Request
fun appendHeader(header: String, vararg values: Any): Request
fun appendHeader(vararg pairs: Pair<String, Any>): Request

• Some of the HTTP headers are defined under Headers.Companion and can be used instead of literal strings. This is an encouraged way to configure your header in 2.x.y.

Fuel.post("/my-post-path")
   .header(Headers.ACCEPT, "text/html, */*; q=0.1")
   .header(Headers.CONTENT_TYPE, "image/png")
   .header(Headers.COOKIE to "basic=very")
   .appendHeader(Headers.COOKIE to "value_1=foo", Headers.COOKIE to "value_2=bar", Headers.ACCEPT to "application/json")
   .appendHeader("MyFoo" to "bar", "MyFoo" to "baz")
   .response { /*...*/ }
 
// => request with:
//    Headers:
//      Accept: "text/html, */*; q=0.1, application/json"
//      Content-Type: "image/png"
//      Cookie: "basic=very; value_1=foo; value_2=bar"
//      MyFoo: "bar, baz"

Response Deserialization

• Fuel provides built-in support for response deserialization. Here is how one might want to use Fuel together with Gson

//User Model
data class User(val firstName: String = "",
                val lastName: String = "") {
 
    //User Deserializer
    class Deserializer : ResponseDeserializable<User> {
        override fun deserialize(content: String) = Gson().fromJson(content, User::class.java)
    }
 
}
 
//Use httpGet extension
"https://www.example.com/user/1".httpGet().responseObject(User.Deserializer()) { req, res, result ->
    //result is of type Result<User, Exception>
    val (user, err) = result
 
    println(user.firstName)
    println(user.lastName)
}

• There are 4 methods to support response deserialization depending on your needs (also depending on JSON parsing library of your choice), and you are required to implement only one of them.

fun deserialize(bytes: ByteArray): T?
fun deserialize(inputStream: InputStream): T?
fun deserialize(reader: Reader): T?
fun deserialize(content: String): T?

• Another example may be parsing a website that is not UTF-8. By default, Fuel serializes text as UTF-8, we need to define our deserializer as such

object Windows1255StringDeserializer : ResponseDeserializable<String> {
    override fun deserialize(bytes: ByteArray): String {
        return String(bytes, "windows-1255")
    }
}

Detail Configuration

• Use singleton FuelManager.instance to manage global configurations.

• Create separate managers using FuelManager()

• basePath is used to manage common root path. Great usage is for your static API endpoint.

FuelManager.instance.basePath = "https://httpbin.org"
 
// Later
Fuel.get("/get").response { request, response, result ->
    //make request to https://httpbin.org/get because Fuel.{get|post|put|delete} use FuelManager.instance to make HTTP request
}

• baseParams is used to manage common key=value query param, which will be automatically included in all of your subsequent requests in format of Parameters (Any is converted to String by toString() method)

FuelManager.instance.baseParams = listOf("api_key" to "1234567890")
 
// Later
Fuel.get("/get").response { request, response, result ->
    //make request to https://httpbin.org/get?api_key=1234567890
}

• client is a raw HTTP client driver. Generally, it is responsible to make Request into Response. Default is HttpClient which is a thin wrapper over java.net.HttpUrlConnection. You could use any httpClient of your choice by conforming to client protocol, and set back to FuelManager.instance to kick off the effect.

• keyStore is configurable by user. By default it is null.

• socketFactory can be supplied by user. If keyStore is not null, socketFactory will be derived from it.

• hostnameVerifier is configurable by user. By default, it uses HttpsURLConnection.getDefaultHostnameVerifier().

• requestInterceptors responseInterceptors is a side-effect to add to Request and/or Response objects.

  • For example, one might wanna print cUrlString style for every request that hits server in DEBUG mode.

val manager = FuelManager()
if (BUILD_DEBUG) {
    manager.addRequestInterceptor(cUrlLoggingRequestInterceptor())
}
 
// Usage
val (request, response, result) = manager.request(Method.GET, "https://httpbin.org/get").response() //it will print curl -i -H "Accept-Encoding:compress;q=0.5, gzip;q=1.0" "https://httpbin.org/get"

• Another example is that you might wanna add data into your Database, you can achieve that with providing responseInterceptors such as

inline fun <reified T> DbResponseInterceptor() =
    { next: (Request, Response) -> Response ->
        { req: Request, res: Response ->
            val db = DB.getInstance()
            val instance = Parser.getInstance().parse(res.data, T::class)
            db.transaction {
                it.copyToDB(instance)
            }
            next(req, res)
        }
    }
 
manager.addResponseInterceptor(DBResponseInterceptor<Dog>)
manager.request(Method.GET, "https://www.example.com/api/dog/1").response() // Db interceptor will be called to intercept data and save into Database of your choice

Routing Support

In order to organize better your network stack FuelRouting interface allows you to easily setup a Router design pattern.

// Router Definition
sealed class WeatherApi: FuelRouting {
 
    override val basePath = "https://www.metaweather.com"
 
    class weatherFor(val location: String): WeatherApi() {}
 
    override val method: Method
        get() {
            when(this) {
                is weatherFor -> return Method.GET
            }
        }
 
    override val path: String
        get() {
            return when(this) {
                is weatherFor -> "/api/location/search/"
            }
        }
 
    override val params: Parameters?
        get() {
            return when(this) {
                is weatherFor -> listOf("query" to this.location)
            }
        }
 
    override val headers: Map<String, String>?
        get() {
            return null
        }
 
}
 
// Usage
Fuel.request(WeatherApi.weatherFor("london"))
    .responseJson { request, response, result ->
        result.fold(success = { json ->
            Log.d("Success", json.array().toString())
        }, failure = { error ->
            Log.e("Failure", error.toString())
        })
    }