How to call a PHP based web-service from Android? - php

Question

I have a simple PHP web-service which return result as JSON .
if($_SERVER["REQUEST_METHOD"]=="POST"){
$arg1=$_POST["arg1"];
processArgs($arg1);
}
processArgs($arg1){
$result=doSomething($arg1);
echo json_encode($result);
}
I could call it from Android side using HttpURLConnection. But the problem is HttpURLConnection seems to be a work in very low level. Is there any level implementation which we could avoid writing the same code for making it asynchronous and for parsing the result.

Answer 1

Simply use HttpClient as follows.
HttpClient httpClient = new DefaultHttpClient();
HttpPost httpPost = new HttpPost("http://your-host/comm.php");
try {
//add your post data
List<NameValuePair> args = new ArrayList<NameValuePair>(2);
args.add(new BasicNameValuePair("arg1", "your-arg-1"));
httpPost.setEntity(new UrlEncodedFormEntity(args));
//send your request
HttpResponse response = httpClient.execute(httpPost);
} catch (ClientProtocolException | IOException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}

Answer 2

HttpURLConnection (java.net.HttpURLConnection) is the default HTTP client in Android.
OkHttp, is another one which became the engine that powers HttpUrlConnection as of Android 4.4. It is offers easier method to customize each requests.
Both HttpURLConnection and OkHttp works at somewhat low level. So we need to write our own code for making it asynchronous and for parsing the result again and again.
Retrofit, on the other hand, is a high level implementation which uses OkHttp for connection and Gson for parsing result. It can be used to turn HTTP APIs into a Java interface with ease.
Therefore, Retrofit would be the best choice unless you have specific reason to go with OkHttp ( Like HTTP-based streaming).