Question

How to read GZIP and Chunked HTTP file by java

Asked by: guochu

I am writing a personal small web browser by using Java. How can I read a file that contains ASCII text, compressed (by gzip) and chunked data file?

This Question has been solved and asker verified All Experts Exchange premium technology solutions are available to subscription members.

Subscribe now for full access to Experts Exchange and get

Instant Access to this Solution

  • Plus...
  • 30 Day FREE access, no risk, no obligation
  • Collaborate with the world's top tech experts
  • Unlimited access to our exclusive solution database
  • Never be left without tech help again

Subscribe Now

Asked On
2008-06-10 at 19:36:06ID23474469
Topics

Java Programming Language

,

Programming Languages

,

HTTP

Participating Experts
2
Points
500
Comments
25

Trusted by hundreds of thousands everyday for fast, accurate and reliable tech support.

  • "The time we save is the biggest benefit of Experts Exchange to Warner Bros. What could take multiple guys 2 hours or more each to find is accessed in around 15 minutes on Experts Exchange." Mike Kapnisakis, Warner Bros.
  • "Our team likes having a resource that is more secure than just using Google and most experts using this service really know their stuff. It's nice to look here first versus using Google." Dayna Sellner, Lockheed Martin
  • "Anytime that I've been stumped with a problem, 9 out of 10 times Experts Exchange has either the accepted solution or an open discussion of the potential solution to the problem." Kenny Red, eBay Inc.

See what Experts Exchange can do for you.

Got a question?

We've got the answer.

Experts Exchange has been collecting answers to technology questions since 1996…3 million and counting! If you have a question, chances are we already have your answer.

Screenshot of Experts Exchange Knowledgebase

Need individual assistance?

Our experts are ready to help.

If you can't find the exact answer you're looking for, ask our exclusive community of 50,000 experts. You’ll get a personalized answer from a trusted professional.

Screenshot of Experts Exchange Knowledgebase

Want to learn from the best?

Read articles from industry experts.

Thousands of free tech tips, tricks, how-to’s and tutorials are available in our peer reviewed articles section. See for yourself how smart our experts are, no login required.

Screenshot of an Article

Working on a long term project?

Store your work and research.

Save solutions to your questions, answers you’ve discovered through searching plus helpful articles in your personal knowledgebase for easy future access.

Screenshot of Experts Exchange Knowledgebase

Access the answers to your technology questions today.

Subscribe Now

30-day free trial. Register in 60 seconds.

What Makes Experts Exchange Unique?

Members of the expert community talk about why the experience at Experts Exchange is different than what you will find anywhere else.

Trusted by the world's most respected brands.

image of each brand's logo

Faithfully serving IT professionals since 1996.

Experts Exchange Logo

Try it out and discover for yourself.

Subscribe Now

30-day free trial. Register in 60 seconds.

Related Solutions

  1. Decompression of gzip files....
    I have some gzip compressed files, all I want to do is to decompress these files without using any external program. I want to include a dll in my own program and make function calls to decompress these files .To do that I got a dll from zlib. The dll name is zlib.dll but th...
  2. Gzip
    Hi all, I need to compress my forum using Gzip, how can I do that? by putting this enough? ob_start ("ob_gzhandler");
  3. WebSphere with GZIP
    How do i enable gzip compression within a WebSphere environment(IBM HTTP Server 1.3.28 (WebSphere 5.1) If there are compartible , could you please run me through step by step on how to configure this. Am trying to do this on Windows 2000 on SQL Database if this will hel...
  4. Decoding chunked data
    In IE i send a request to a website. it is able to display the website properly.. i checked the sniffer for data..and parsed it correctly..then implement it in my java but then when i sent a post, it returns me gibberish.. HTTP/1.1 200 OK Date: Tue, 19 Jul 2005 17:39:13 GM...
  5. Compress in GZIP
    I have this function to Unzip Gzip compressed files. What I need is to be able to compress files in the Gzip format. Using this function as an example, how could I rewrite it to compress in to a "*.gz" file? Thanks in advance. /** * Unzip a gzipped (.gz) file. ...

Free Tech Articles

  1. WARNING: 5 Reasons why you should NEVER fix a computer for free.
    It is in our nature to love the puzzle. We are obsessed. The lot of us. We love puzzles. We love the challenge. We thrive on finding the answer. We hate disarray. It bothers us deep in our soul. W...
  2. SCCM OSD Basic troubleshooting
    SCCM 2007 OSD is a fantastic way to deploy operating systems, however, like most things SCCM issues can sometimes be difficult to resolve due to the sheer volume of logs to sift through and the dispe...
  3. Migrate Small Business Server 2003 to Exchange 2010 and Windows 2008 R2
    This guide is intended to provide step by step instructions on how to migrate from Small Business Server 2003 to Windows 2008 R2 with Exchange 2010. For this migration to work you will need the fo...
  4. Create a Win7 Gadget
    This article shows you how to create a simple "Gadget" -- a sort of mini-application supported by Windows 7 and Vista. Gadgets can be dropped anywhere on the desktop to provide instant information, ...
  5. Outlook continually prompting for username and password
    There have been a lot of questions recently regarding Outlook prompting for a username and password whilst using Exchange 2007. There are a few reasons why this would happen and I will try to cover t...
  6. Backup Exchange 2010 Information Store using Windows Backup
    There seems to be quite a lot of confusion around the ability to backup Exchange 2010 using the built in Windows Backup feature. This stems from the omission of this feature prior to Exchange 2007 s...

Cloud Class Webinars

  1. Avoiding Bugs in Microsoft Access
    Alison Balter takes and in-depth look at avoiding bugs in Access. In this webinar you will learn about using the immediate window to debug your applications, invoking the debugger, using breakpoints to troubleshoot, stepping through code, setting the next statement to execute, ...
  2. Top 10 Best New Features in Visio 2010
    Scott Helmers gives live demonstrations of the top 10 new features in Visio 2010. This webinar will teach you how to create compelling diagrams by adding shapes to the page with a single click, linking the shapes in a diagram to data in Excel (or SQL Server, or SharePoint), ...
  3. IT Consultant Business Secrets Revealed
    Michael Munger, Experts Exchange tech pro and IT consultant, pulls back the curtain on his very successful businesses and answers question on every IT consultant and business owner should know about. He shares secrets on what he did to solve the 5 most common problems in IT, ...
  4. Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity
    Quest CTO, Mike Billon, gives an overview of the steps involved in building a dunamic disaster recovery plan. Through case studies and an examination of software/hardware tooles for monitoring and testing, you'll gain a better understandin of where you are, where you want ...
  5. Organize Your Visio Diagrams with Containers and Lists
    Scott Helmers uses cross functional flowcharts, wireframe diagrams, data graphic legends and seating charts to teach you: how to ustilize all three new structured diagram components in Visio 2010, the best practices for organizeing shapes in previous version of Visio, how to organize ...
  6. How to Us Objects, Properties, Events and Methods in Microsoft Access
    Alison Dalter gives an in-depbth look at objects, properties, events and methods in Microsoft Access. In this webinar you will learn about using the object browser, referring to objects, working with properties and methods, working with object variables, understanding the ...

Join the Community

Give a Little. Get a Lot.

Join the community of experts here and help other tech pros by answering question in your area of expertise. You can earn FREE access to all Experts Exchange's premium features and resources.

Join the Community

Answers

 

by: MicheleMarconPosted on 2008-06-10 at 23:14:08ID: 21757267

for GZIP

http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.4.2/docs/api/java/util/zip/package-summary.html

for chunked data use byte buffers

for text... well use String or StringBuffer ;)

 

by: CEHJPosted on 2008-06-11 at 01:19:02ID: 21757813

The HttpClient lilbrary can handle this afaik

http://hc.apache.org/httpclient-3.x/

 

by: CEHJPosted on 2008-06-11 at 02:21:07ID: 21758066

It could be that it's not handled transparently though. Here is an example using the aforementioned API that wraps a POST method. Something similar could easily be done for a GET method

http://tinyurl.com/5b46ec

 

by: guochuPosted on 2008-06-11 at 12:32:12ID: 21763384

I need to write my own code to my small application. Now, if I can solve the problem below, then everything would be fine!

For example:
byte data [ ] = new byte [10];
int size = 0;
size = fin.read(data);     //fin is the instance of FileInputStream
...
now the content of data is containing GZIP data, e.g [31, -117, 8, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 4, 0]
How can I use GZIP to decompress this array?

Thanks!!!

 

by: CEHJPosted on 2008-06-11 at 12:50:24ID: 21763554

>>  //fin is the instance of FileInputStream

If you were going to use home-brewed code (not sure why you would since the problems have already been solved for you) then you wouldn't use FileInputStream, you'd use GZIPInputStream

 

by: guochuPosted on 2008-06-11 at 14:24:56ID: 21764252

When you start reading the http response message, the first several lines are ASCII text then follows with compressed and chunked data.
For example:
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Cache-Control: no-cache
Connection: close
...
a
9     
578
ÄWmS"9þ~U÷²s
...
0
fin reads up to the end of ASCII text, then continues to read the first chunked data. the first letter "a" means the first chunked data has 10 bytes -
byte data [ ] = new byte [10];
int size = 0;
size = fin.read(data);   //i.e [31], [-117], [8], [0], [0], [0], [0], [0], [4], [0]
My question is how to decompress this array? How can I decode this chunked data to ASCII text?
If I use GZIPInputStream right at the beginning to read this response message, it won't work at all :(

 

by: CEHJPosted on 2008-06-11 at 14:30:09ID: 21764286

>>If I use GZIPInputStream right at the beginning to read this response message, it won't work at all :(

It will if you use HttpURLConnection

 

by: guochuPosted on 2008-06-11 at 14:59:54ID: 21764472

The response message is already saved in file. We need to extract information out from this file. How can the HttpURLConnection open and read this file?

 

by: CEHJPosted on 2008-06-11 at 15:40:25ID: 21764721

You just need to open a stream on the file. Try using something like below. If you can post an example file, i'll try it

URL url = new URL("thefile.htm");
HttpURLConnection conn = (HttpURLConnection)url.openConnection();

                                              
1:
2:

Select allOpen in new window

 

by: guochuPosted on 2008-06-11 at 17:17:31ID: 21765205

I have attached an example file with the file extension log. You can change any extension as long as we can extract the data out from the file.

  • httpMessage.log
    • 2 KB

    file contains ascii text, compressed and chucked data.

 

by: CEHJPosted on 2008-06-12 at 00:52:44ID: 21766985

OK thanks.

>>The response message is already saved in file

First of all though - why is it that you have this contained in files at all? Since you said:

>> I am writing a personal small web browser by using Java

Web browsers operate on a socket connection to a server

 

by: guochuPosted on 2008-06-12 at 11:01:16ID: 21772046

This is for testing the correctness of my application!

 

by: CEHJPosted on 2008-06-12 at 11:34:52ID: 21772365

Well unfortunately, it will make it operate in a very different way. Unless you create a small web server and write those files literally as the response

 

by: CEHJPosted on 2008-06-12 at 11:40:19ID: 21772433

(An HttpURLConnection [what you need] expects to operate on a web server, not a file)

 

by: guochuPosted on 2008-06-12 at 11:41:26ID: 21772441

Do you mean there is no way we can open this mixed data format file by using java?

 

by: CEHJPosted on 2008-06-12 at 11:50:35ID: 21772522

Opening it is no problem - it's just that HttpURLConnection is not designed to read files

 

by: CEHJPosted on 2008-06-12 at 14:07:32ID: 21773729

The following works fine for me, with a proper web server

import java.net.*;
import java.io.*;
import java.util.zip.*;
 
public class GzipWebRead {
    public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
	URL url = new URL(args[0]);
	HttpURLConnection conn = (HttpURLConnection)url.openConnection();
	conn.setRequestProperty("Accept-Encoding", "gzip");
	InputStream in = new GZIPInputStream(conn.getInputStream());
	int buf = -1;
	while((buf = in.read()) > -1) {
	    System.out.print((char)buf);
	}
	in.close();
    }
}
                                              
1:
2:
3:
4:
5:
6:
7:
8:
9:
10:
11:
12:
13:
14:
15:
16:
17:

Select allOpen in new window

 

by: guochuPosted on 2008-06-13 at 16:26:51ID: 21783407

Thanks CEHJ...
However, I tried to run your program and didn't work. I am not sure your problem can open a file offline.
I need a method can open and read the file (the one I attached before) offline. Do you have some idea about FilterInputStream? I am still learning how to use this class. I think this maybe the right direction should go for it.

 

by: CEHJPosted on 2008-06-13 at 23:37:32ID: 21784330

>>I am not sure your problem can open a file offline.

No - i've already said that HttpURLConnection is not designed to read files. If your objective is to be a real web client, i suggest, as i've also already said, that you make a test server that simply writes your files on client (the one i posted) connect

 

by: guochuPosted on 2008-06-16 at 12:50:33ID: 21796847

Hello CEHJ,
I have been thinking a couple of days about your method. If you can custom make the http request, then it will be perfect!
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
For example, I use socket to make connection, I can program the send message whatever I want.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
sock = new Socket(url, port);
request = sock.getOutputStream();
response = sock.getInputStream();
request.write(sendMessage.getBytes());
length = response.read(recv);
if(length > 0){
   message = new String (recva);
   System.out.println(message);
}
--------------------------------------------------------------------
The sendMessage is a long string -
sendMessage = GET / HTTP/1.1\r\nHost: www.somesite.com\r\nUser-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.8.1.11) Gecko/20071220 BonEcho/2.0.0.11\r\nAccept: text/xml,application/xml,application/xhtml+xml,text/html;q=0.9,text/plain;q=0.8,image/png,*/*;q=0.5\r\n
Accept-Language: en-us,en;q=0.5\r\nAccept-Encoding: gzip,deflate\r\nAccept-Charset: ISO-8859-1,utf-8;q=0.7,*;q=0.7\r\nKeep-Alive: 300\r\nConnection: keep-alive\r\n\r\n

Can you make the same http request (as above) by using your method? If yes, I would like to see how! Please let me know! Thanks!

 

by: CEHJPosted on 2008-06-16 at 14:29:00ID: 21797692

The problem you have is not in making the request. The code i posted works fine - i tested it with my web server. Your problem is, as i've said more times than i care to remember now, that you're trying to read from files instead of connecting to a web server. If you want to keep testing against files instead of a real web server, then you need to follow my last suggestion

 

by: guochuPosted on 2008-06-16 at 15:52:02ID: 21798236

Yes, your code is working perfectly. I have completely changed my program because of your suggestion.

I just want to know a bit more about your method.

My method -
sendMessage = "GET /path/example.html HTTP/1.1\r\n" +
                           "Host: www.somesite.com\r\n" +
                           "User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.8.1.11) Gecko/20071220 BonEcho/2.0.0.11\r\n" +
                           "Accept: text/xml,application/xml,application/xhtml+xml,text/html;q=0.9,text/plain;q=0.8,image/png,*/*;q=0.5\r\n" +
                           "Accept-Language: en-us,en;q=0.5\r\n" +
                           "Accept-Encoding: gzip,deflate\r\n" +
                           "Accept-Charset: ISO-8859-1,utf-8;q=0.7,*;q=0.7\r\n" +
                           "Keep-Alive: 300\r\n" +
                           "Referer: http://www.originalsite.com/\r\n" +
                           "Connection: keep-alive\r\n\r\n"
 
url = "www.somesite.com";
port = 80;
sock = new Socket(url, port);
request = sock.getOutputStream();
request.write(sendMessage.getBytes());
 
Your method -
URL url = new URL("http://www.somesite.com");
HttpURLConnection conn = (HttpURLConnection)url.openConnection();
conn.setRequestProperty("Accept-Encoding", "gzip,deflate");

Can I use method two to do the same thing like method one?
Method one - I can make the sendMessage headers whatever I want.
Method two - what are the methods for "GET /path/example.html HTTP/1.1", "Referer: http://www.originalsite.com/", etc.,

By the way, can I repeat using setRequestProperty to set the other headers as below?

conn.setRequestProperty("User-Agent", "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.8.1.11) Gecko/20071220 BonEcho/2.0.0.11");
conn.setRequestProperty("Accept", "text/xml,application/xml,application/xhtml+xml,text/html;q=0.9,text/plain;q=0.8,image/png,*/*;q=0.5");
conn.setRequestProperty("Accept-Language", "en-us,en;q=0.5");
conn.setRequestProperty("Accept-Encoding", "gzip,deflate");
conn.setRequestProperty("Accept-Charset", "ISO-8859-1,utf-8;q=0.7,*;q=0.7");
conn.setRequestProperty("Keep-Alive", "300");
conn.setRequestProperty("Connection", "keep-alive");

Thanks!!!

 

by: CEHJPosted on 2008-06-16 at 16:14:08ID: 21798385

>>By the way, can I repeat using setRequestProperty to set the other headers as below?

Should be OK, yes

20120131-EE-VQP-002

3 Ways to Join

30-Day Free Trial

The Experts

98% positive feedback on 31,087 answers since March 2000. angeliii is a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional for his work with MS SQL Server & Develoment.

He has also proven his knowledge of Visual Basic Programming, PHP Scripting and Oracle Databases.

The Experts

97% positive feedback on 10,752 answers since July 2000. lrmoore has more than 18 years experience in the networking industry.

The six-time Mircosoft MVPs specialties include firewalls, virtual private networking, and network management.

Testimonials

"...and excellent source for support... Kind of like having your very own IT dept." Electriciansnet

Testimonials

"I was apprehensive at signing up at first. However... it has already made my life as an IT administrator much easier." JaCrews

Testimonials

"WOW! You guys have great, active, and knowledgeable people on here." moore50

Business Clients

Business Clients

In the Press

"If you’ve got a question... Experts Exchange can supply an answer.”

In the Press

"...an invaluable aid for both IT professionals and those who require tech support."

In the Press

"where IT professionals provide quick answers on just about any topic"

Business Account Plans

Loading Advertisement...