ZLink HTTP Client For Java — User Guide

⚠️ This guide is not current. The only guide that has finished review and upkeep right now is the .NET guide. This document reflects an earlier state, and once the .NET guide is finished, this document will be deleted and rewritten based on it.

When confirming the contract, don't trust this document — check the spec tree.

zlink-http-client is a general-purpose HTTP client for sending HTTP requests from Java. It is used with a zlink-style fluent builder, and the public surface does not expose java.net.http types.

HttpResponse<CreateGameRes> game = ZLinkHttpClient.create("https://game-api.example.internal")
    .post("/games")
    .body(new CreateGameReq("ranked-match-0611"))
    .submit(CreateGameRes.class)
    .toCompletableFuture().join();   // Compose with thenCompose instead of join inside a handler

Table Of Contents

Chapter	Document	Content
1	Overview	Design philosophy, deliverable boundary, execution model
2	Getting Started	Dependency, first request, one-line request
3	Client Configuration	Builder options, client reuse, java.net.http mapping
4	Making Requests	HTTP methods, query, headers, request timeout
5	Request Body	JSON, raw, form, multipart, streaming upload
6	Handling Responses	Response structure, submit/fetch, status handling
7	Async	CompletionStage, non-blocking, blocking rules
8	Streaming	download(sink) download, chunked upload
9	Authentication And TLS	Basic/Bearer, HTTPS verification, mTLS
10	Redirect · Retry · Cookie	Redirect semantics, retries, cookie jar
11	Proxy	HTTP proxy, proxy authentication
12	Compression	Transparent gzip/deflate decoding
13	Error Handling	Exception model, retriable, exception paths

The Kotlin coroutine (suspend) extension and DSL are covered in the Kotlin Coroutine Extension (a thin idiom layer sharing the Java runtime).

The formal contract and regression test axes are owned by the spec document java-http-client.ko.md.