title: Connecting to Web Service with apache HttpClient
body: <p>The <a href="http://hc.apache.org/httpcomponents-client-ga/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Appache HTTP Components</a> library seems to work fine for communicating with a regular web site, but is unable to connect to a web service.</p>
  
  <p>I am building come components to run inside a Java Desktop application that will communicate with a Web Service-REST using the Jersey framework.  The web service is running and I can communicate it with my web browser and with the Test-Web-Service function in netbeans. </p>
  
  <p>The client code works fine if I try to read from a regular web page or even the default page for the Glassfish web server running on my machine.
  Why is it that when I try to reach the web service with my client program (code below) do I get a 404 Not Found error from the web server?</p>
  
  <pre><code>import java.io.*;
  import org.apache.http.*;
  import org.apache.http.client.*;
  import org.apache.http.impl.client.DefaultHttpClient;
  import org.apache.http.client.methods.*;  //HttpHead, HttpPut, HttpGet, etc...
  import org.apache.http.util.EntityUtils;
  
  public class ApacheClientDemo {
  
    public static void demo() throws IOException {           
       String uri = "http://localhost:8080/Proctorest/resources/helloWorld";
       HttpClient httpclient = new DefaultHttpClient();
       HttpGet httpget = new HttpGet(uri);
       HttpResponse response = httpclient.execute(httpget);
       System.out.println(response.getStatusLine().toString());
       HttpEntity entity = response.getEntity();
       System.out.println();
       System.out.println(EntityUtils.toString(entity));       
    }
  
    public static void main(String[] args) {
      try {
          demo();
      }
      catch(IOException ioe) {
          System.out.println(ioe);
      }
    }
  }
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>When going to a regular web site on-line or a non-web service site hosted locally, the output is</p>
  
  <pre><code> HTTP/1.1 200 OK
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Followed by the content of the web page.</p>
  
  <p>The code above gives me</p>
  
  <pre><code>  HTTP/1.1 404 Not Found
  </code></pre>
  
  <p><hr/>Edit: Below is the code for the web service.
  The web service code was generated from a Netbeans sample project.
  <img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/OUhv0.png" alt="Netbeans Sample Web Service project"></p>
  
  <pre><code>/*
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  package helloworld;
  
  import javax.ejb.EJB;
  import javax.ejb.Stateless;
  
  import javax.ws.rs.Path;
  import javax.ws.rs.GET;
  import javax.ws.rs.PUT;
  import javax.ws.rs.Produces;
  import javax.ws.rs.Consumes;
  
  /**
  * REST Web Service
  *
  * @author mkuchtiak
  */
  
  @Stateless
  @Path("/helloWorld")
  public class HelloWorldResource {
  
      @EJB
      private NameStorageBean nameStorage;
      /**
      * Retrieves representation of an instance of helloworld.HelloWorldResource
      * @return an instance of java.lang.String
      */
      @GET
      @Produces("text/html")
      public String getXml() {
          return "&lt;html&gt;&lt;body&gt;&lt;h1&gt;Hello "+nameStorage.getName()+"!&lt;/h1&gt;&lt;/body&gt;&lt;/html&gt;";
      }
  
      /**
      * PUT method for updating an instance of HelloWorldResource
      * @param content representation for the resource
      * @return an HTTP response with content of the updated or created resource.
      */
      @PUT
      @Consumes("text/plain")
      public void putXml(String content) {
          nameStorage.setName(content);
      }
  }
  
  /////////// NameStorageBean .java
  
  import javax.ejb.Singleton;
  
  /** Singleton session bean used to store the name parameter for "/helloWorld" resource
  *
  * @author mkuchtiak
  */
  @Singleton
  public class NameStorageBean {
  
      // name field
      private String name = "World";
  
      public String getName() {
          return name;
      }
  
      public void setName(String name) {
          this.name = name;
      }
  
  }
  </code></pre>