Question

Ideally, I am looking for something like JAX-RS (using annotations to describe the services I want to call), but allowing to call REST services implemented using other technologies (not JAX-RS). Any suggestion?

Answer 1

You wrote in a comment that you were “hoping for something more high level” than HttpClient. It sounds like Restlet would be perfect. It provides a high-level API for implementing and using RESTful web applications, with plug-and-play adapters for the lower-level implementations.

For example, to POST a webform to a resource using Restlet 1.1:

Client client = new Client(Protocol.HTTP);

Form form = new Form();
form.add("foo", "bar");
form.add("abc", "123");

Response response = client.post("http://host/path/to/resource", form.getWebRepresentation())

if (response.getStatus().isError()) {
    // deal with the error
    return;
}

if (response.isEntityAvailable()) {
    System.out.println(response.getEntity().getText());
}

If you need to set more options on the request, you can use a Request object:

Form form = new Form();
form.add("foo", "bar");
form.add("abc", "123");

Request request = new Request(Method.POST, "http://host/path/to/resource");

request.setEntity(form.getWebRepresentation());

request.setReferrerRef("http://host/path/to/referrer");

Response response = client.handle(request);

HTH!