Protocol and Content Handlers

Protocol and content handlers separate the data that's retrieved from an Internet server from the protocol used to retrieve it. They also allow browsers to be dynamically extended at runtime to handle new and unexpected protoco0ls and content types.

Content handlers are subclasses of the java.net.ContentHandler class. Protocol handlers are a combination of the subclasses of the java.netURLConnection and java.net.URLStreamHandler classes.

The best available description of protocol and content handlers is probably chapters 11 and 12 of my own Java Network Programming. (O'Reilly & Associates, 1997).


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Last Modified April 22, 1999
Copyright 1997, 1999 Elliotte Rusty Harold
elharo@metalab.unc.edu