Download multiple files with 1 HttpURLConnection

Question

Hi,
We have an application that downloads small text files (< 2 Kb) from a webserver. These files are downloaded 1 by 1 when needed. We open a HttpURLConnection, download 1 file and close the connection immediately afterwards. This is done for each file and hence produces a significant overhead.
For performance reasons (both client and server side), we would like to open a connection to the webserver once, download a number of files and then close the connection.
Currently, our code roughly looks like:
InputStream is;
HttpURLConnection con;
int resp;
try {
    URL url = new URL(location);
    con = (HttpURLConnection)url.openConnection();
    resp=con.getResponseCode();
    if(resp==HttpURLConnection.HTTP_OK) {
        is = con.getInputStream();
        // ... read data from the InputStream
        is.close();
} catch (MalformedURLException murle) {
    murle.printStackTrace();
} catch (IOException ioe) {
    ioe.printStackTrace();
}Is it even possible to download multiple files from a web server using a HttpURLConnection? If so, how? :-)
Please note that the solution should be compliant with J2SE 1.1, since we are writing an MHP application!
Thanks in advance...

Answer 1

Seerix,
You might be able to fudge the settings of the URL class :
Class URLStreamHandler
Method protected void setURL
Sets the fields of the URL argument to the indicated values. Only classes derived from URLStreamHandler are supposed to be able to call the set method on a URL.
But this is not the best way, as URLs are supposed to be constant.
Your alternative, is to create a Socket, deal with the protocol requirements
(i.e. HTTP GET, POST and so on) then you can request any number files
on that same connection. The only thing that this saves is connection build up and tear down.
You could also multi-thread your original code ....... Although that might
only save you some network transit time.
-Cludge