Fetching HTTP Request

NetworkUtils.java

/**
     * This method returns the entire result from the HTTP response.
     *
     * @param url The URL to fetch the HTTP response from.
     * @return The contents of the HTTP response.
     * @throws IOException Related to network and stream reading
     */
    public static String getResponseFromHttpUrl(URL url) throws IOException {

        // open http url connection object
        // does not talk to network yet
        HttpURLConnection urlConnection = (HttpURLConnection) url.openConnection();

        try {

            // to read input contents
            InputStream in = urlConnection.getInputStream();

            // tokenize streams
            Scanner scanner = new Scanner(in);

            // set delimiter to "\A"
            // beginning of stream
            // force scanner to read entire contents of stream into the next token stream
            // this buffers data:
                // pull data into small chunks
                // http isnt required to give content size, code needs to be ready to handle different sizes
                // allocates and deallocates when needed
                // handles character encoding: translates UTF-8(default for json/javascript) to UTF-16 (default for Android)
            // https://stackoverflow.com/questions/309424/read-convert-an-inputstream-to-a-string?page=1&tab=votes#tab-top

            scanner.useDelimiter("\\A");

            boolean hasInput = scanner.hasNext();
            if (hasInput) {
                return scanner.next();
            } else {
                return null;
            }
        }
        finally {
            urlConnection.disconnect();
        }
    }