bridge

Project Url: afollestad/bridge
Introduction: A simple but powerful HTTP networking library for Android. It features a Fluent chainable API, powered by Java/Android's URLConnection classes for maximum compatibility and speed.
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Bridge is a simple but powerful HTTP networking library for Android. It features a Fluent chainable API, powered by Java/Android's URLConnection classes for maximum compatibility and speed.

Table of Contents

Core

  1. Dependency
    1. Gradle (Java)
    2. Gradle (Android)
    3. Maven
  2. Requests
    1. Request Basics
    2. Request Headers
    3. Request Authentication
    4. Request Retries
    5. Request Bodies
      1. Plain Bodies
      2. Form Bodies
      3. MultipartForm Bodies
    6. Streaming Bodies
    7. Info Callbacks
  3. Responses
    1. Response Basics
    2. Response Bodies
  4. Error Handling
  5. Async
    1. Async Requests
    2. Duplicate Avoidance
    3. Upload Progress
    4. Download Progress
  6. Request Cancellation
    1. Cancelling Single Requests
    2. Cancelling Multiple Requests
    3. Preventing Cancellation
  7. Validation
  8. Configuration
    1. Host Configuration
    2. Default Headers
    3. Timeout Configuration
    4. Buffer Size
    5. Logging
    6. Redirects
    7. Global Validators
  9. Cleanup

Conversion

  1. Conversion API
    1. Requests
    2. Responses
    3. Dot Notation
    4. Custom Converters

Dependency

jCenter Build Status Codecov Codacy Badge License

The dependency is available via jCenter. jCenter is the default Maven repository used by Android Studio. It can easily be applied to IntelliJ IDEA also.

Gradle (Java)

Add the compile statement to your module's build.gradle dependencies:

dependencies {
    ...
    compile 'com.afollestad:bridge:5.1.2'
}

Gradle (Android)

Add the compile statement to your module's build.gradle dependencies:

dependencies {
    ...
    compile('com.afollestad:bridge:5.1.2') {
        exclude group: 'org.json', module: 'json'
    }
}

The exclusion inside the inner brackets leaves out the JSONObject/JSONArray classes provided through Ason, since the Android framework includes those classes. This hasn't worked in some cases, so you may get warnings when building your app.

Maven

<dependency>
  <groupId>com.afollestad</groupId>
  <artifactId>bridge</artifactId>
  <version>5.1.2</version>
  <type>pom</type>
</dependency>

Requests

The request API in Bridge is very easy to use.

Request Basics

The code below will request Google's homepage:

Request request = Bridge
    .get("https://www.google.com")
    .request();

Bridge allows you to pass format args into request URLs (this applies to get(), post(), put(), delete(), etc.):

Request request = Bridge
    .get("https://www.google.com/search?q=%s", searchQuery)
    .request();

There are two advantages to doing this when your requests require query parameters: code readability is improved, no string. concatenation is necessary. The contents of the searchQuery variable are automatically URL encoded for you, e.g spaces are replaced with %20.

Request Headers

Adding or changing request headers is pretty simple:

Request request = Bridge
    .get("https://www.google.com")
    .header("User-Agent", "My App!")
    .header("CustomHeader", "HelloWorld")
    .request();

If you had the need to do so, you could also set a Map of headers with the headers(Map<String, Object>) method.

Note: the Configuration goes over how you can set default headers for all requests.

Request Authentication

Out of the box, Bridge supports basic HTTP auth:

BasicAuthentication auth = BasicAuthentication.create("username", "password");

Request request = Bridge
    .get("https://www.idk.com/private.html")
    .authentication(auth)
    .request();

Any class which implements the Authentication interface can be passed through .authentication().

Request Retries

At a basic level, retries are easy. Just provide a number indicating the max allowed retries, along with how long you want to pause between retries.

This will retry up to 5 times, if a request isn't successful for any reason. It will wait 6000 milliseconds (6 seconds) between each retry.

Bridge.get("http://test.com")
    .throwIfNotSuccess()
    .retries(5, 6000)
    .request();

At an advanced level, you can control quite a lot. If you provide a retry callback, you can decide whether or not you want to actually retry again (up to the specified amount of total retries) by returning true or false. You can see the response of the failed request (if any), an Exception representing why the request failed, and a RequestBuilder that you can use to modify the next retry request before it gets made.

Bridge.get("http://test.com")
    .throwIfNotSuccess()
    .retries(5, 6000, new RetryCallback() {
        @Override
        public boolean onWillRetry(@Nullable Response previousResponse, BridgeException problem, RequestBuilder newRequest) {
            if (previousResponse != null && previousResponse.code() == 500) {
                // Don't allow retry if there was a 500 Internal Server Error
                return false;
            }

            if (previousResponse.code() == 401) {
                // If we were 401 Unauthorized, set different login credentials before the next retry
                newRequest.authentication(BasicAuthentication.create("username", "new-password!"));
            }

            // Allow retry
            return true;
        }
    }).request();

Request Bodies

A lot of networking libraries make request bodies a bit difficult. Bridge aims to make them easy.

Plain Bodies

A description shouldn't be necessary for this:

String postContent = "Hello, how are you?";
Request request = Bridge
    .post("https://someurl.com/post.js")
    .body(postContent)
    .request();

In addition to passing a String, other types of "plain" bodies include:

  • byte[]
  • JSONObject
  • JSONArray

There are other types of bodies discussed in the next few sections, along with in the Request Conversion section at the bottom (which is a bit more advanced).

Form Bodies

Form's are commonly used with PUT/POST requests. They're basically the same thing as query strings with get requests, but the parameters are included in the body of the request rather than the URL.

Form form = new Form()
    .add("Username", "Aidan")
    .add("Password", "Hello");
Request request = Bridge
    .post("https://someurl.com/login.js")
    .body(form)
    .request();
MultipartForm Bodies

A MultipartForm is a bit different than a regular form. Content is added as a "part" to the request body. The content is included as raw data associated with a content type, allowing you to include entire files. Multipart forms are commonly used in HTML forms (e.g. a contact form on a website), and they can be used for uploading files to a website.

MultipartForm form = new MultipartForm()
    .add("Subject", "Hello")
    .add("Body", "Hey, how are you?")
    .add("FileUpload", new File("/sdcard/Download/ToUpload.txt"))
    .add("FileUpload2", "ToUpload2.mp4", Pipe.forFile(new File("/sdcard/Download/ToUpload2.mp4")));
Request request = Bridge
    .post("https://someurl.com/post.js")
    .body(form)
    .request();

This will automatically set the Content-Type header to multipart/form-data.

Note: MultipartForm has an add() method that accepts a Pipe. This can be used to add parts from streams (see the section below on how Pipe is used). add() for File objects is actually using this indirectly for you.

Streaming Bodies

Bridge's Pipe API allows you to easily stream data directly into a post body.

Pipe pipe = new Pipe() {

    byte[] content = "Hello, this is a streaming example".getBytes();

    @Override
    public String hash() {
        // Creates a unique identifier based on the content being sent,
        // Used for duplicate request handling.
        return HashUtil.hash(content);
    }

    @Override
    public void writeTo(@NonNull OutputStream os, @Nullable ProgressCallback progressListener) throws IOException {
        os.write(content);
        // Notify optional progress listener that all data was transferred
        if (progressListener != null)
            progressListener.publishProgress(content.length, content.length);
    }

    @NonNull
    @Override
    public String contentType() {
        // text/plain since we are sending bytes that represent a string, or plain text.
        return "text/plain";
    }

    @Override
    public int contentLength() throws IOException {
        return content.length;
    }

    @Override
    public void close() {
        // Unused for this simple example, usually you would close streams and release resources
    }
};

Request request = Bridge
    .post("https://someurl.com/post.php")
    .body(pipe)
    .request();

Note: the value returned for contentType() in the Pipe is automatically set to the value of the associated header. You can override that by changing the header after the body is set.

Pipe has two static convenience methods that create a pre-built Pipe instance for certain uses:

Pipe filePipe = Pipe.forFile(new File("/sdcard/myfile.txt"));

InputStream is = // ...
Pipe transferPipe = Pipe.forStream(is, "text/plain", "unique-identifier-such-as-file-name");

They should be mostly self-explanatory. **On Android, if you want to read from a URI such as a content:// URI, you can use forStream() with an InputStream obtained using a Content Resolver.

Info Callbacks

You can set an info callback to receive various events, including a connection being established, and request bodies being sent:

Request request = Bridge
    .get("https://www.google.com")
    .infoCallback(new InfoCallback() {
        @Override
        public void onConnected(Request request) {
            // Connection to Google established
        }

        @Override
        public void onRequestSent(Request request) {
            // This method is optional to override
            // Indicates request body was sent to Google
        }
    }).request();

It's likely that more will be added to this later.


Responses

Like requests, Bridge intends to make response interaction super easy.

Response Basics

The code below should be mostly self explanatory:

Request request = Bridge
    .get("https://www.google.com")
    .request();

Response response = request.response();
if (response.isSuccess()) {
    // Request returned HTTP status 200-300
} else {
    // Request returned an HTTP error status
}

You can also have Bridge throw an Exception in the event that isSuccess() returns false:

try {
    Request request  = Bridge
        .get("https://www.google.com")
        .throwIfNotSuccess()
        .request();
    Response response = request.response();
    // Use successful response
} catch(BridgeException e) {
    // See the error handling section
}

If you don't need a reference to the Request object, you can immediately retrieve the Response:

Response response = Bridge
    .get("https://www.google.com")
    .response();

You can retrieve response headers similar to how request headers are set:

Response response = // ...
String headerValue = response.header("Header-Name");

Headers can also have multiple values, separated by commas:

Response response = // ...
List<String> values = response.headerList("Header-Name");

You can even retrieve the full map of headers:

Response response = // ...
Map<String, List<String>> headers = response.headers();

Since Content-Type and Content-Length are commonly used response headers, there's two convenience methods for these values:

Response response = // ...
String contentType = response.contentType();
int contentLength = response.contentLength();

Response Bodies

Bridge includes many methods to make converting responses to object types you need easy. The code below should be self-explanatory:

Response response = // ...

byte[] responseRawData = response.asBytes();

// Converts asBytes() to a UTF-8 encoded String.
String responseString = response.asString();

// Cached in the Response object, using this method multiples will reference the same Ason.
// This allows your app to not re-parse the JSON if it's used multiple times.
Ason responseAsonObject = response.asAsonObject();

// Cached in the Response object, using this method multiples will reference the same AsonArray.
// This allows your app to not re-parse the JSON if it's used multiple times.
AsonArray responseAsonArray = response.asAsonArray();

// Same as asAsonObject(), just uses the underlying stock JSONObject instance
JSONObject responseJsonObject = response.asJsonObject();

// Same as asAsonArray(), just uses the underlying stock JSONArray instance
JSONArray responseJsonArray = response.asJsonArray();

// Save the response content to a File of your choosing
response.asFile(new File("/sdcard/Download.extension"));

response.asLineStream()

If you're not interested in using the Request or Response object during requests, you can immediately retrieve the response body:

String responseBody = Bridge
    .get("https://www.google.com")
    .asString();

asString() could be replaced with any of the body conversion methods above. Using this will automatically use throwIfNotSuccessful(), so a BridgeException is thrown in case that the HTTP status code is not 200-300.


Error Handling

The BridgeException class is used throughout the library and acts as a single exception provider. This helps avoid the need for different exception classes, or very unspecific Exceptions.

If you wanted, you could just display errors to the user using BridgeException#getMessage(). However, BridgeException lets you know exactly what happened before the user sees anything.


The BridgeException#reason() method returns a constants that indicate why the exception was thrown. If the Exception is for a request, you can retrieve the Request with BridgeException#request(). If the Exception is for a response, you can retrieve the Response with BridgeException#response().

BridgeException e = // ...
switch (e.reason()) {
    case BridgeException.REASON_REQUEST_CANCELLED: {
        Request request = e.request();
        // Used in BridgeExceptions passed to async request callbacks
        // when the associated request was cancelled.
        break;
    }
    case BridgeException.REASON_REQUEST_TIMEOUT: {
        Request request = e.request();
        // The request timed out (self explanatory obviously)
        break;
    }
    case BridgeException.REASON_REQUEST_FAILED: {
        Request request = e.request();
        // Thrown when a general networking error occurs during a request,
        // not including timeouts.
        break;
    }
    case BridgeException.REASON_RESPONSE_UNSUCCESSFUL: {
        Response response = e.response();
        // Thrown by throwIfNotSuccess(), when you explicitly want an
        // Exception be thrown if the status code was unsuccessful.
        break;
    }
    case BridgeException.REASON_RESPONSE_UNPARSEABLE: {
        Response response = e.response();
        // Thrown by the response conversion methods (e.g. asAsonObject(), ...)
        // When the response content can't be successfully returned in the
        // requested format. E.g. a JSON error.
        break;
    }
    case BridgeException.REASON_RESPONSE_IOERROR: {
        Response response = e.response();
        // Thrown by the asFile() response converter when the library
        // is unable to save the content to a file.
        break;
    }
    case BridgeException.REASON_RESPONSE_VALIDATOR_FALSE:
    case BridgeException.REASON_RESPONSE_VALIDATOR_ERROR:
        String validatorId = e.validatorId();
        // Discussed in the Validators section
        break;
}

Note: you do not need to handle all of these cases everywhere a BridgeException is thrown. The comments within the above example code indicate where those reasons are generally used.


Async

Up until now, all code has been syncronous, meaning it gets run on the calling thread. Android does not allow you to perform networking options on the UI thread, for good reasons. Asyncronous requests become very important when you don't want to handle threading yourself. Plus, Bridge comes with some huge advantages when using async methods.

Async Requests

Here's a basic example of an async request. Obviously, get() can be replaced with the other HTTP methods such as post().

Bridge
    .get("https://www.google.com")
    .throwIfNotSuccess() // optional
    .request(new Callback() {
        @Override
        public void response(Request request, Response response, BridgeException e) {
            if (e != null) {
                // See the 'Error Handling' section for information on how to process BridgeExceptions
                int reason = e.reason();
            } else {
                // Use the Response object
                String responseContent = response.asString();
            }
        }
    });

Like syncronous requests, there are shortcuts to response conversion:

Bridge
    .get("http://www.google.com")
    .asString(new ResponseConvertCallback<String>() {
        @Override
        public void onResponse(@NonNull Response response, @Nullable String object, @Nullable BridgeException e) {
            if (e != null) {
                // See the 'Error Handling' section for information on how to process BridgeExceptions
                int reason = e.reason();
            } else {
                // Use object parameter
            }
        }
    });

Not only is the calling thread not blocked, duplicate avoidance also comes into the picture (see the section below).

Duplicate Avoidance

Duplicate avoidance is a feature of Bridge which allows you to avoid making multiple requests to a URL at the same time.

Bridge.get("http://www.google.com")
    .request(new Callback() {
        @Override
        public void response(Request request, Response response, BridgeException e) {
            // Use error or response
        }
    });
Bridge.get("http://www.google.com")
    .request(new Callback() {
        @Override
        public void response(Request request, Response response, BridgeException e) {
            // Use error or response
        }
    });

The above code requests Google's homepage in rapid succession. Since the first request will most likely not finish before the computer has a chance to begin requesting the second, Bridge will pool these requests together. The second request does not get exectued, instead, it waits for the first to finish executing, and returns the response to both callbacks at the same time.

There is no limit to how many requests can be pooled. Bridge's sample project requests an entire page of images, but the image is only downloaded once.

With POST/PUT requests, duplicate avoidance will also account for request bodies using MD5 hashes. If request bodies are different, they will be considered two different requests that should both execute.

Upload Progress

Upload progress is pretty straight forward:

Bridge
    .post("https://someurl.com/upload.js")
    .body(Pipe.forUri(this, data.getData()))
    .uploadProgress(new ProgressCallback() {
        @Override
        public void progress(Request request, int current, int total, int percent) {
            // Use progress
        }
    })
    .request(new Callback() {
        @Override
        public void response(Request request, Response response, BridgeException e) {
            // Use response
        }
    });

Download Progress

The callback used to receive asyncronous request results has an optional progress method that can be overidden in your callback:

Bridge
    .get("http://someurl.com/bigfile.extension")
    .request(new Callback() {
        @Override
        public void response(Request request, Response response, BridgeException e) {
            // Use Response or error
        }

        @Override
        public void progress(Request request, int current, int total, int percent) {
            // Progress updates
        }
    });

Note: progress callbacks are only used if the library is able to deetermine the size of the content being downloaded. Generally, this means the requested URL needs to return a value for the Content-Length header. When it comes to Pipe's, the Pipe handles reporting progress to the progress callback on its own.


Request Cancellation

Request cancellation is another cool feature that Bridge specializes in. Note that it only works with asyncronous requests, syncronous requests can't be cancelled since they can block the main thread.

Cancelling Single Requests

The Request object has a simple cancel() method:

Request request = Bridge
    .get("https://www.google.com")
    .request(new Callback() {
        @Override
        public void response(Request request, Response response, BridgeException e) {
            // Use error or response
        }
    });
request.cancel();
`

When the request is cancelled, the callback receives a BridgeException. reason() will return BridgeException.REASON_REQUEST_CANCELLED. Most apps will probably ignore the error in this case.

Cancelling Multiple Requests

The Bridge class allows you to cancel multiple (or all) active async requests.

All Active

This code will cancel all active requests, regardless of method or URL:

Bridge.cancelAll().commit();
Method, URL/Regex

You can even cancel all active requests that match an HTTP method and a URL or regular expression pattern.

This will cancel all GET requests to any URL starting with http:// and ending with .png:

int count = Bridge.cancelAll()
    .method(Method.GET)
    .url("http://.*\\.png")
    .commit();

.* is a wildcard in regular expressions, \\ escapes the period to make it literal.

If you want to cancel all requests to a specific URL, you can use Pattern.quote() to specify a regex that matches literal text:

int count = Bridge.cancelAll()
    .method(Method.GET)
    .url(Pattern.quote("http://www.android.com/media/android_vector.jpg"))
    .commit();
Tags

When making a request, you can tag it with a value (of any type):

Bridge.get("http://www.google.com")
    .tag("Hello!")
    .request(new Callback() {
        @Override
        public void response(Request request, Response response, BridgeException e) {
            // Use response or error
        }
    });

You can then cancel all requests which have that tag:

Bridge.cancelAll()
    .tag("Hello!")
    .commit();

Preventing Cancellation

There are certain situations in which you wouldn't want to allow a request to be cancelled. For an example, your app may make calls to Bridge.cancelAll().commit() when an Activity pauses; that way, all requests that were active in that screen are cancelled. However, there may be a Service in your app that's making requests in the background that you would want to maintain. You can make those requests non-cancellable:

Bridge.get("http://www.google.com")
    .cancellable(false)
    .request(new Callback() {
        @Override
        public void response(Request request, Response response, BridgeException e) {
            // Use response or error
        }
    });

This request will be ignored by Bridge.cancelAll() unless cancellation is forced:

Bridge.cancelAll()
    .force()
    .commit();

Validation

Validators allow you to provide consistent checking that certain conditions are true for a response.

ResponseValidator validator = new ResponseValidator() {
    @Override
    public boolean validate(@NonNull Response response) throws Exception {
        Ason json = response.asAsonObjecte();
        return json.get("success");
    }

    @NonNull
    @Override
    public String id() {
        return "custom-validator";
    }
};
try {
    Ason response = Bridge
        .get("http://www.someurl.com/api/test")
        .validators(validator)
        .asAsonObject();
} catch (BridgeException e) {
    if (e.reason() == BridgeException.REASON_RESPONSE_VALIDATOR_FALSE) {
        String validatorId = e.validatorId();
        // Validator returned false
    } else if (e.reason() == BridgeException.REASON_RESPONSE_VALIDATOR_ERROR) {
        String validatorId = e.validatorId();
        String errorMessage = e.getMessage();
        // Validator threw an error
    }
}

The validator is passed before the request returns. Basically, the validator will check if a boolean field in the response JSON called success is equal to true. If you had an API on a server that returned true or false for this value, you could automatically check if it's true for every request with a single validator.

You can even use multiple validators for a single request:

ResponseValidator validatorOne = // ...
ResponseValidator validatorTwo = // ...

try {
    Ason response = Bridge
        .get("http://www.someurl.com/api/test")
        .validators(validatorOne, validatorTwo)
        .asAsonObject();
} catch (BridgeException e) {
    if (e.reason() == BridgeException.REASON_RESPONSE_VALIDATOR_FALSE) {
        String validatorId = e.validatorId();
        // Validator returned false
    } else if (e.reason() == BridgeException.REASON_RESPONSE_VALIDATOR_ERROR) {
        String validatorId = e.validatorId();
        String errorMessage = e.getMessage();
        // Validator threw an error
    }
}

Notes: validators work great with async requests too! You can even apply validators to every request in your application by setting global validators (discussed below).


Configuration

Bridge allows you to set various parameters that are maintained as long as your app stays in memory.

Host Configuration

You can set a host that is used as the base URL for every request.

Bridge.config()
    .host("http://www.google.com");

With Google's homepage set as the host, the code below would request http://www.google.com/search?q=Hello:

Bridge
    .get("/search?q=%s", "Hello")
    .asString();

Basically, the URL you pass with each request is appended to the end of the host. If you were to pass a full URL (beginning with HTTP) in get() above, it would skip using the host for just that request.

Default Headers

Default headers are headers that are automatically applied to every request. You don't have to do it yourself with every request in your app.

Bridge.config()
    .defaultHeader("User-Agent", "Bridge Sample Code")
    .defaultHeader("Content-Type", "application/json")
    .defaultHeader("Via", "My App");

Every request, regardless of the method, will include those headers. You can override them at the individual request level by setting the header as you normally would.

Timeout Configuration

You can configure how long the library will wait until timing out, either for connections or reading:

Bridge.config()
    .connectTimeout(10000)
    .readTimeout(15000);

You can set timeouts at the request level too:

Bridge.get("http://someurl.com/bigVideo.mp4")
    .connectTimeout(10000)
    .readTimeout(15000)
    .request();

Buffer Size

The default buffer size is 1024 * 4 (4096). Basically, when you download a webpage or file, the buffer size is how big the byte array is with each pass. A large buffer size will create a larger byte array, which can affect memory usage, but it also increases the pace in which the content is downloaded.

The buffer size can easily be configured:

Bridge.config()
    .bufferSize(1024 * 10);

Just remember to be careful with how much memory you consume, and test on various devices. You can set the buffer size at the request level too:

Bridge.get("http://someurl.com/bigVideo.mp4")
    .bufferSize(1024 * 10)
    .response();

Note: the buffer size is used in a few other places, such as pre-built Pipe's (Pipe#forUri, Pipe#forStream, etc.).

Logging

By default, logging is disabled. You can enable logging to see what the library is doing in your Logcat:

Bridge.config()
    .logging(true);

Redirects

By default, automatically following redirects is enabled. You can however disable this functionality:

Bridge.config()
    .autoFollowRedirects(false);

You can also set a maximum number of redirects allowed for a single request, the default is 4:

Bridge.config()
    .maxRedirects(4);

Global Validators

Validators for individual requests were shown above. You can apply validators to every request in your application:

Bridge.config()
    .validators(new ResponseValidator() {
        @Override
        public boolean validate(@NonNull Response response) throws Exception {
            Ason json = response.asAsonObject();
            return json.getBoolean("success");
        }

        @NonNull
        @Override
        public String id() {
            return "custom-validator";
        }
    });

Note: you can pass multiple validators into the validators() method just like the individual request version.


Cleanup

When you're done with Bridge (e.g. your app is terminating), you should call the destroy() method to avoid any memory leaks. Your app would be fine without this, but this is good practice and it helps speed up Java's garbage collection.

Bridge.destroy();

Note: Calling this method will also cancel all active requests for you.


Conversion API

Bridge's conversion feature allows you to use Java object instances/arrays/lists directly as a request bodies, and convert response bodies directly to Java object instances/arrays/lists.

Bridge comes with a built-in JSON converter, which is powered by one of my other libraries, Ason.

Requests

Take this class for an example:

@ContentType("application/json")
public class Person {

    public Person() {
    }

    public Person(String name, int age) {
        this.name = name;
        this.age = age;
    }

    @Header(name = "Custom-Header")
    public String customHeader;

    @AsonName(name = "full_name")
    public String name;
    public int age;
    public Person spouse;   

    @AsonIgnore
    public Object idk;
}

The ContentType annotation is used to lookup what request converter should be used. The annotation's value also gets applied as the Content-Type header of requests that the object is passed in to.

The Header annotation can be used to apply request header values.

The AsonName annotations provide custom names for fields that are serialized into the response body.

The AsonIgnore annotation tells the library to ignore marked fields during serialization/deserialization.

You can use instances of this class as a request body.

Person person = new Person("Aidan Follestad", 21);
person.girlfriend = new Person("Waverly Moua", 19);
Request request = Bridge
    .post("https://someurl.com/post.js")
    .body(person)
    .request();

You can even send arrays or lists of this object as a request body (and it gets converted to a JSON Array):

Person[] people = new People[] {
    new Person("Aidan Follestad", 21),
    new Person("Waverly Moua", 19)
};
Request request = Bridge
    .post("https://someurl.com/post.js")
    .body(people)
    .request();

Responses

Imagine a URL that returns JSON like this:

{
    "name": "Aidan Follestad",
    "age": 21,
    "spouse": {
        "name": "Waverly Moua",
        "age": 19
    }
}

You can retrieve that URL and convert the contents directly to a Person instance like this:

Bridge.get("https://www.someurl.com/person.json")
    .asClass(Person.class, new ResponseConvertCallback<Person>() {
        @Override
        public void onResponse(@NonNull Response response, @Nullable Person object, @Nullable BridgeException e) {
            // Use response object
        }
    });

You can even retrieve arrays of JSON:

[
    {
        "name": "Aidan Follestad",
        "age": 21,
        "spouse": {
            "name": "Waverly Moua",
            "age": 19
        }
    },
    {
        "name": "Waverly Moua",
        "age": 19
    }
]
// Arrays
Bridge.get("https://www.someurl.com/person_array.json")
    .asClassArray(Person.class, new ResponseConvertCallback<Person[]>() {
        @Override
        public void onResponse(@NonNull Response response, @Nullable Person[] objects, @Nullable BridgeException e) {
            // Use response objects
        }
    });

// Lists
Bridge.get("https://www.someurl.com/person_array.json")
    .asClassList(Person.class, new ResponseConvertCallback<List<Person>>() {
        @Override
        public void onResponse(@NonNull Response response, @Nullable List<Person> objects, @Nullable BridgeException e) {
            // Use response objects
        }
    });

Dot Notation

Bridge supports dot notation through Ason, which is better explained by example. Take this class:

@ContentType("application/json")
public static class Person {

    public Person() {
    }

    public Person(String name, int age) {
        this.name = name;
        this.age = age;
    }

    @AsonName(name = "person.name")
    public String name = "Aidan";
    @AsonName(name = "person.age.$t")
    public int age = 21;
}

When converted to JSON, it will appear like this:

{
    "person": {
        "name": "Aidan",
        "age": {
            "$t": 21
        }
    }
}

The dots in the names of the AsonName annotation parameters indicate a path of objects that it takes to reach the value. This works with deserialization also.

If your JSON keys actually have periods in them, you can escape periods in your path with a forward slash. For an example, with this JSON:

{
    "files": {
        "test.txt": "Hello, world!"
    }
}

You can retrieve the value of test.txt using the path files.test\\.txt.

Custom Converters

You can create your own converters and assign them to Content-Type's.

This is what the built-in JsonConverter looks like:

public class JsonConverter extends IConverter {

    @Override public byte[] serialize(Object object) throws Exception {
        Ason ason = Ason.serialize(object);
        return ason.toString().getBytes("UTF-8");
    }

    @Override public byte[] serializeArray(Object[] objects) throws Exception {
        AsonArray ason = Ason.serializeArray(objects);
        return ason.toString().getBytes("UTF-8");
    }

    @Override public byte[] serializeList(List<Object> objects) throws Exception {
        AsonArray ason = Ason.serializeList(objects);
        return ason.toString().getBytes("UTF-8");
    }

    @Override public <T> T deserialize(Response response, Class<T> cls) throws Exception {
        return Ason.deserialize(response.asAsonObject(), cls);
    }

    @Override public <T> T[] deserializeArray(Response response, Class<T> cls) throws Exception {
        return (T[]) Ason.deserialize(response.asAsonArray(), cls);
    }

    @Override public <T> List<T> deserializeList(Response response, Class<T> cls) throws Exception {
        return Ason.deserializeList(response.asAsonArray(), cls);
    }
}

It gets registered by the library like this:

Bridge.config()
    .converter("application/json", JsonConverter.class);
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