Read url to string in few lines of java code

Question

I'm trying to find Java's equivalent to Groovy's:

String content = "http://www.google.com".toURL().getText();

I want to read content from a URL into string. I don't want to pollute my code with buffered streams and loops for such a simple task. I looked into apache's HttpClient but I also don't see a one or two line implementation.

Answer 1

Now that some time has passed since the original answer was accepted, there's a better approach:

String out = new Scanner(new URL("http://www.google.com").openStream(), "UTF-8").useDelimiter("\\A").next();

If you want a slightly fuller implementation, which is not a single line, do this:

public static String readStringFromURL(String requestURL) throws IOException

{

    try (Scanner scanner = new Scanner(new URL(requestURL).openStream(),

            StandardCharsets.UTF_8.toString()))

    {

        scanner.useDelimiter("\\A");

        return scanner.hasNext() ? scanner.next() : "";

    }

}