Java News from Monday, November 22, 2004

The Jakarta Apache Project has posted the first beta of HTTPClient 3.0. New features in 3.0 include:

• New preference architecture
• Improved exception handling framework
• Granular non-standards configuration and tracking
• Improved HTTP Version configuration and tracking
• Support for streaming entities
• Support for tunneled HTTP proxies via the ProxyClient
• Ability to abort execution of HTTP methods
• Support for closing idle connections
• Support for JDK1.4 connect timeout through reflection
• Support for connection manager shutdown
• Improved authentication framework
• Plug-in mechanism for authentication modules
• Interactive authentication support
• Alternate authentication support
• Cookie specification plug-in mechanism
• 'Ignore cookies' cookie policy
• Improved Netscape cookie support
• Cross-site redirect support

According to the announcement, "Starting with this release the 3.0 API is frozen. We will now focus on creating additional documentation and test cases. All current HttpClient 2.0 users are strongly encouraged to migrate to 3.0. "