Question

All I need to to do is to connect via https. Must I use commons client for this?

Answer 1

No, you don’t have to, you can use a regular URLConnection. Something like this:

public class URLConnectionReader {

    public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
        URL url = new URL("https://jax-ws.dev.java.net/");
        URLConnection uc = url.openConnection();
        BufferedReader in = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(
                                uc.getInputStream()));
        String inputLine;

        while ((inputLine = in.readLine()) != null) {
            System.out.println(inputLine);
        }
        in.close();
    }    
}

This may require a bit more work if the site you’re connecting to uses a certificate that has not been signed by a well known CA or a self-signed certificate. But this is another story.