[Android] How do I load URL that requires login into variable?

Question

I am trying to port my usage meter from a JavaScript Gadget (win) / Widget (OSX) to Android. Total newbie when comes to JAVA + Eclipse + Android 2.1 SDK. Essentially what I want to do is load a page, pass through a username and password and load the resulting page into a array that I can then run some regular expressions through.

My code from JavaScript (I've replace the actual URL with a dummy one) is:

xmlhttp.open("post","https://acme.com.au/your_account/index.php?function=login",false);
xmlhttp.setRequestHeader("If-Modified-Since", "Sat, 1 Jan 2000 00:00:00 GMT");
xmlhttp.setRequestHeader("Content-Type", "application/x-www-form-urlencoded");
xmlhttp.send("check_username=" + username + "&password=" + password);

I need to know the Android equivalent to the above please. I've played around with WebView but that loads the page in a web browser which isn't what I want.

Answer 1

If you don't want to include a third party library, you could somthing along the lines below:

URL url = new URL("https://acme.com.au/your_account/index.php?function=login");

HttpURLConnection conn = (HttpURLConnection) url.openConnection();

// If you need a cookie from previous requests
//conn.setRequestProperty("Cookie", "JSESSIONID=" + encode(jSessionId, "UTF-8")); 
conn.setRequestProperty("If-Modified-Since", "Sat, 1 Jan 2000 00:00:00 GMT");
conn.setRequestProperty("Content-Type", "application/x-www-form-urlencoded");

conn.setRequestMethod("POST");
conn.setDoOutput(true);
conn.setDoInput(true);

DataOutputStream out = new DataOutputStream(conn.getOutputStream());
out.writeBytes(String.format("check_username=%s&password=%s",
        URLEncoder.encode(PERSNR, "UTF-8"),
        URLEncoder.encode(PASSWD, "UTF-8")));

out.close();

// I have absolutely no idea why this is needed.
InputStream is = conn.getInputStream();
// ... read the response from is.
is.close();

However I encourage you to use some third party library for anything less trivial than this. I use Apache HttpClient in my Android widget :)

Answer 2

So I've been using this method for a few days now (http://svn.apache.org/repos/asf/httpcomponents/httpclient/branches/4.0.x/httpclient/src/examples/org/apache/http/examples/client/ClientFormLogin.java) and the app now keeps crashing with a Protocol 443 error - something about unable to resolve the address. Worked fine when first installed and then just stopped. The same with on the device itself, worked fine until this morning and now the same issue?? Nothing wrong with the URL as I can still load in a browser.