Protopack

This is essentially a quick way to get Java URLConnections to work with simple protocols that are either "shortcuts" or are fairly easy to implement and have fallen out of the spec. It's much more a personal project that I expand on as I need support for some random thing than anything stable.

Protopack is not intended to replace something like Apache Commons Net. Instead, it's much more focused on providing a way to connect to various protocols using the existing java.net.URL structure and methods.

Installation

As easy as I could make it:

ProtoPack.install();

Adds Protopack's packages to the System property key. Different JVMs may cache this value, so it's best to run this as early in your code as possible.

Currently Implemented Protocols

Shortcuts

These are protocols that are really just representations of text or aliases for more verbose links, so they're pretty easy to implement.

• javascript
• data

Simple Protocols

These take more work, since they involve looking up a spec and comparing implementations. My rule of thumb is that I probably won't implement it if Apache Commons Net provides a method that's either really easy to use or has insanely low overhead for several connections.

• gopher