Bespoke Android App Developers: OkHttp

Bespoke Android App Developers: OkHttp

Android OkHttp is a popular open-source library that provides an easy-to-use interface for making HTTP requests in Android apps. It is developed and maintained by Square, a company that has also created other popular libraries such as Retrofit and Picasso.

OkHttp supports HTTP/2 and offers a number of advanced features, such as connection pooling, transparent compression, and response caching. It also includes a powerful logging and debugging tool that can help developers diagnose and fix issues with their HTTP requests.

Using OkHttp in an Android app is relatively straightforward. After adding the library to your app's dependencies, you can create an instance of the OkHttpClient class and use it to make HTTP requests. OkHttp provides several classes for building and executing HTTP requests, including Request, FormBody, and MultipartBody.

Here's an example of using OkHttp to make a simple HTTP GET request:

OkHttpClient client = new OkHttpClient(); Request request = new Request.Builder() .url("https://example.com/api/data") .build(); Response response = client.newCall(request).execute(); String responseBody = response.body().string();

This code creates an OkHttpClient instance and uses it to make a GET request to the URL "https://example.com/api/data". The response is then converted to a string and stored in the responseBody variable.

Overall, Android OkHttp is a powerful and easy-to-use library that can simplify the process of making HTTP requests in Android apps.


Android OkHttp is a widely-used open-source library for making HTTP requests in Android applications. It was developed by Square, and is built on top of the Java HttpURLConnection class, providing an easy-to-use API for making HTTP requests and handling responses.

Some of the key features of OkHttp include:

  1. Support for HTTP/2 and HTTP/1.1 protocols
  2. Caching of responses to improve performance
  3. Automatic handling of redirects and retries
  4. Connection pooling to reduce latency
  5. Support for asynchronous requests and callbacks
  6. Interceptors to customize request/response behavior
  7. Integration with Retrofit, a popular library for building RESTful APIs in Android

To use OkHttp in your Android project, you can add the library as a dependency in your build.gradle file. Then, you can create an instance of the OkHttpClient class, which is used to make HTTP requests. You can customize the behavior of the client by adding interceptors or configuring settings such as timeouts and connection pooling.

Here's an example of making a simple GET request using OkHttp:

OkHttpClient client = new OkHttpClient(); Request request = new Request.Builder() .url("https://www.example.com/api/data") .build(); Response response = client.newCall(request).execute(); String responseBody = response.body().string(); Log.d(TAG, responseBody);

This code creates a new instance of OkHttpClient, builds a request with a URL, and executes the request using the client. The response is then read into a String and logged to the console.

Overall, Android OkHttp is a powerful and flexible library for making HTTP requests in Android, with many advanced features for optimizing performance and customization.

Read more about OkHttp