We can indicate the HTTP method that's used by our request using the following methods from HttpRequest.Builder:

• GET(): This method sends the request using the HTTP GET method, as shown in the following example:

HttpRequest requestGet = HttpRequest.newBuilder()
  .GET() // can be omitted since it is default
  .uri(URI.create("https://reqres.in/api/users/2"))
  .build();

• POST(): This method sends the request using the HTTP POST method, as shown in the following example:

HttpRequest requestPost = HttpRequest.newBuilder()
  .header("Content-Type", "application/json")
  .POST(HttpRequest.BodyPublishers.ofString(
    "{"name": "morpheus","job": "leader"}"))
  .uri(URI.create("https://reqres.in/api/users"))
  .build();

• PUT(): This method sends the request using the HTTP PUT method, as shown in the following example:

HttpRequest requestPut = HttpRequest.newBuilder()
  .header("Content-Type", "application/json")
  .PUT(HttpRequest.BodyPublishers.ofString(
    "{"name": "morpheus","job": "zion resident"}"))
  .uri(URI.create("https://reqres.in/api/users/2"))
  .build();

• DELETE(): This method sends the request using the HTTP DELETE method, as shown in the following example:

HttpRequest requestDelete = HttpRequest.newBuilder()
  .DELETE()
  .uri(URI.create("https://reqres.in/api/users/2"))
  .build();

The client can handle all types of HTTP methods, not only the predefined methods (GET, POST, PUT, and DELETE). To create a request with a different HTTP method, we just need to call method().

The following solution triggers an HTTP PATCH request:

HttpRequest requestPatch = HttpRequest.newBuilder()
  .header("Content-Type", "application/json")
  .method("PATCH", HttpRequest.BodyPublishers.ofString(
    "{"name": "morpheus","job": "zion resident"}"))
  .uri(URI.create("https://reqres.in/api/users/1"))
  .build();

When no request body is required, we can rely on BodyPublishers.noBody(). The following solution uses the noBody() method to trigger an HTTP HEAD request:

HttpRequest requestHead = HttpRequest.newBuilder()
  .method("HEAD", HttpRequest.BodyPublishers.noBody())
  .uri(URI.create("https://reqres.in/api/users/1"))
  .build();

In the case of multiple similar requests, we can rely on the copy() method to copy the builder, as shown in the following snippet of code:

HttpRequest.Builder builder = HttpRequest.newBuilder()
  .uri(URI.create("..."));

HttpRequest request1 = builder.copy().setHeader("...", "...").build();
HttpRequest request2 = builder.copy().setHeader("...", "...").build();