What exactly does URLConnection.setDoOutput() affect?

android, java, urlconnection

Solution

You need to set it to true if you want to send (output) a request body, for example with POST or PUT requests. With GET, you do not usually send a body, so you do not need it.

Sending the request body itself is done via the connection's output stream:

conn.getOutputStream().write(someBytes);

Problem

There's `setDoOutput()` in `URLConnection`. According to documentation I should Set the DoOutput flag to true if you intend to use the URL connection for output, false if not. Now I'm facing exactly this problem - the Java runtime converts the request to `POST` once `setDoOutput(true)` is called and the server only responds to `GET` requests. I want to understand what happens if I remove that `setDoOutput(true)` from the code. What exactly will this affect? Suppose I set it to `false` - what can I do now and what can't I do now? Will I be able to perform `GET` requests? What is "output" in context of this method?

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