Is there a faster way to download a page from the net to a string?

Question

I have tried other methods to download info from a URL, but needed a faster one. I need to download and parse about 250 separate pages, and would like the app to not appear ridiculously slow. This is the code I am currently using to retrieve a single page, any insight would be great.

try 
{
    URL myURL = new URL("http://www.google.com");
    URLConnection ucon = myURL.openConnection();
    InputStream inputStream = ucon.getInputStream();
    BufferedInputStream bufferedInputStream = new BufferedInputStream(inputStream);
    ByteArrayBuffer byteArrayBuffer = new ByteArrayBuffer(50);
    int current = 0;
    while ((current = bufferedInputStream.read()) != -1) {
        byteArrayBuffer.append((byte) current);
    }
    tempString = new String(byteArrayBuffer.toByteArray());

} 
catch (Exception e) 
{
    Log.i("Error",e.toString());
}

Answer 1

Try to keep the connection open if the requests are to the same server. Also, try to avoid reallocations in the buffer, and read as much as possible in one go.

const int APPROX_MAX_PAGE_SIZE = 300;
try 
{
    URL myURL = new URL("http://www.google.com");
    URLConnection ucon = myURL.openConnection();
    ucon.setRequestHeader("Connection", "keep-alive") // (1)
    InputStream inputStream = ucon.getInputStream();
    BufferedInputStream bufferedInputStream = new BufferedInputStream(inputStream);
    ByteArrayBuffer byteArrayBuffer = new ByteArrayBuffer(APPROX_MAX_PAGE_SIZE); // (2)
    int current = 0;
    byte[] buf = new byte[APPROX_MAX_PAGE_SIZE];
    int read;
    do {
       read = bufferedInputStream.read(buf, 0, buf.length); // (3)
       if(read > 0) byteArrayBuffer.append(buf, 0, read);
    } while (read >= 0);
    tempString = new String(byteArrayBuffer.toByteArray());

} 
catch (Exception e) 
{
    Log.i("Error",e.toString());
}

1. Set Keep-alive header (not sure if you need this, on J2SE it is a configurable property as well)
2. Allocate what is "usually enough" in the buffer to avoid reallocation.
3. Read more than one byte at once

Disclaimer: This was written "in the blind" without access to a Java compiler. It may be that setRequestHeader is only available on a HttpURLConnection (cast needed), or that some parameters are wrong, but please feel free to edit if so.

Answer 2

Why don't you use the built in apache http components?

HttpClient httpClient = new DefaultHttpClient();
HttpGet request = new  HttpGet(uri);
HttpResponse response = httpClient.execute(request);

int status = response.getStatusLine().getStatusCode();

if (status != HttpStatus.SC_OK) {
    ByteArrayOutputStream ostream = new ByteArrayOutputStream();
    response.getEntity().writeTo(ostream);
} 

Answer 3

Use a pooled HTTPClient and try to make 2 or 3 requests at once. And try to create a memory pool to avoid allocations and the GC stalls.