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Java · Code recipe

Get the rendered HTML of a JavaScript page in Java

Fetch the HTML a browser ends up with, JavaScript and all, in Java 17+ with java.net.http.HttpClient. Every program on this page runs as it stands — each one was run against a stub of the API before it was published.

By · Last updated: September 2026

TL;DR

To get the HTML of a JavaScript-rendered page in Java, POST its URL to https://urlpipe.dev/html with sync set to true. The body is the DOM after the page's scripts ran in real Chrome, serialized as HTML — what a visitor's browser holds, not what the server first sent — read with HttpResponse.BodyHandlers.ofString(), for 1 credit.

Free plan, no credit card. 1,000 credits a month.

One POST to /html loads the page in real Chrome, lets its JavaScript run, and serializes the DOM it ended up with. For a single-page app that is the difference between an empty <div id="root"> and the content; the rendered vs raw HTML guide shows how far apart the two get.

The body is the HTML as text, read with HttpResponse.BodyHandlers.ofString(). The program saves it and reports its size in bytes — compare that with curl -s https://example.com | wc -c and you see how much of the page only exists after the scripts ran.

Setup

Before you start

Java 17 or later: java.net.http is in the JDK. The async and error-handling programs read JSON, and the JDK has no parser, so those use Gson — one jar, no dependencies of its own. In a Maven or Gradle build add com.google.code.gson:gson:2.13.1; to try a file on its own, download the jar next to it.

Terminal
java -version   # 17 or later
curl -sSLO https://repo1.maven.org/maven2/com/google/code/gson/gson/2.13.1/gson-2.13.1.jar
export URLPIPE_API_KEY="your_api_key"

The request

Save the rendered HTML and report its size

"sync": true keeps the request open until the result is ready. BodyHandlers.ofString() reads the whole body as text, decoded with the charset the response names. HttpClient does not throw on a 4xx or 5xx, so check statusCode(). body.length() counts UTF-16 chars; the size on disk is the UTF-8 byte count.

RenderedHtml.java
import java.net.URI;
import java.net.http.HttpClient;
import java.net.http.HttpRequest;
import java.net.http.HttpResponse;
import java.nio.charset.StandardCharsets;
import java.nio.file.Files;
import java.nio.file.Path;
import java.time.Duration;

public class RenderedHtml {
    public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
        var request = HttpRequest.newBuilder(URI.create("https://urlpipe.dev/html"))
            .header("Authorization", "Bearer " + System.getenv("URLPIPE_API_KEY"))
            .header("Content-Type", "application/json")
            // A sync call can take up to 60 s; HttpClient would otherwise wait forever.
            .timeout(Duration.ofSeconds(90))
            .POST(HttpRequest.BodyPublishers.ofString("""
                {"url": "https://example.com", "sync": true}
                """))
            .build();

        var response = HttpClient.newHttpClient().send(request, HttpResponse.BodyHandlers.ofString());
        if (response.statusCode() != 200) {
            System.err.println("URLpipe answered " + response.statusCode() + ": " + response.body());
            System.exit(1);
        }
        String body = response.body();

        Files.writeString(Path.of("page.html"), body);
        System.out.println("Saved page.html (" + body.getBytes(StandardCharsets.UTF_8).length + " bytes)");
    }
}

Run it: java RenderedHtml.java

Async

The async variant: a token, a webhook and a poll

Leave out sync and the answer is a token, straight away. One HttpClient is shared by every call — it holds the connection pool, so build it once — and a switch expression covers the answers GET /result/:token can give.

RenderedHtmlAsync.java
import com.google.gson.JsonParser;
import java.net.URI;
import java.net.http.HttpClient;
import java.net.http.HttpRequest;
import java.net.http.HttpResponse;
import java.nio.charset.StandardCharsets;
import java.nio.file.Files;
import java.nio.file.Path;
import java.time.Duration;

public class RenderedHtmlAsync {
    static final String API = "https://urlpipe.dev";
    static final HttpClient CLIENT = HttpClient.newHttpClient();

    static HttpResponse<String> send(HttpRequest.Builder builder) throws Exception {
        var request = builder
            .header("Authorization", "Bearer " + System.getenv("URLPIPE_API_KEY"))
            .timeout(Duration.ofSeconds(30))
            .build();
        return CLIENT.send(request, HttpResponse.BodyHandlers.ofString());
    }

    static void fail(String message) {
        System.err.println(message);
        System.exit(1);
    }

    public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
        // No "sync": the request is accepted at once and the work carries on without you.
        var accepted = send(HttpRequest.newBuilder(URI.create(API + "/html"))
            .header("Content-Type", "application/json")
            .POST(HttpRequest.BodyPublishers.ofString("""
                {
                  "url": "https://example.com",
                  "report_to": "https://your-app.com/webhooks/urlpipe",
                  "labels": {"customer": "acme"}
                }
                """)));
        if (accepted.statusCode() != 200) {
            fail("URLpipe answered " + accepted.statusCode() + ": " + accepted.body());
        }
        String token = JsonParser.parseString(accepted.body()).getAsJsonObject().get("token").getAsString();
        System.out.println("Accepted " + token);

        // The result is POSTed to report_to when it is ready. Polling by token is the
        // other way to collect it: no endpoint needed, and a backup for the webhook.
        HttpResponse<String> response = null;
        for (int attempt = 0; attempt < 60; attempt++) {
            response = send(HttpRequest.newBuilder(URI.create(API + "/result/" + token)).GET());
            if (response.statusCode() != 202) { // 202 means still processing
                break;
            }
            Thread.sleep(2000);
        }
        switch (response.statusCode()) {
            case 200 -> { }
            case 202 -> fail("Still processing after two minutes; try the token again later.");
            case 422 -> fail("The analysis failed: "
                + JsonParser.parseString(response.body()).getAsJsonObject().get("error").getAsString());
            case 410 -> fail("The result is past the 30-day window; send the request again.");
            default -> fail("URLpipe answered " + response.statusCode() + ": " + response.body());
        }
        String body = response.body();

        Files.writeString(Path.of("page.html"), body);
        System.out.println("Saved page.html (" + body.getBytes(StandardCharsets.UTF_8).length + " bytes)");
    }
}

Run it: java -cp gson-2.13.1.jar RenderedHtmlAsync.java

Errors

Handle errors and retries

A checked URLpipeException makes the caller decide what a refusal means. firstValueAsLong reads Retry-After without a parse of your own, and a body that is not JSON (a 401 answers in plain text) falls back to an empty object.

RenderedHtmlErrors.java
import com.google.gson.JsonObject;
import com.google.gson.JsonParser;
import java.net.URI;
import java.net.http.HttpClient;
import java.net.http.HttpRequest;
import java.net.http.HttpResponse;
import java.nio.charset.StandardCharsets;
import java.nio.file.Files;
import java.nio.file.Path;
import java.time.Duration;

public class RenderedHtmlErrors {
    static class URLpipeException extends Exception {
        URLpipeException(String message) {
            super(message);
        }
    }

    static final HttpClient CLIENT = HttpClient.newHttpClient();

    // POST a sync request and return the result body; retry the two 429s that clear by themselves.
    static String urlpipe(String path, String payload) throws Exception {
        final int attempts = 5;
        for (int attempt = 0; attempt < attempts; attempt++) {
            var request = HttpRequest.newBuilder(URI.create("https://urlpipe.dev" + path))
                .header("Authorization", "Bearer " + System.getenv("URLPIPE_API_KEY"))
                .header("Content-Type", "application/json")
                .timeout(Duration.ofSeconds(90))
                .POST(HttpRequest.BodyPublishers.ofString(payload))
                .build();
            var response = CLIENT.send(request, HttpResponse.BodyHandlers.ofString());
            int status = response.statusCode();
            if (status == 200) {
                return response.body();
            }
            if (status == 401) {
                throw new URLpipeException("401: the API key is missing or wrong. Check URLPIPE_API_KEY.");
            }

            JsonObject error;
            try {
                error = JsonParser.parseString(response.body()).getAsJsonObject();
            } catch (RuntimeException notJson) {
                error = new JsonObject();
            }
            String code = error.has("error") ? error.get("error").getAsString() : "";
            String detail = error.has("message") ? code + ": " + error.get("message").getAsString() : code;

            if (status == 429 && code.equals("rate_limited")) {
                // Sending too fast: Retry-After says how long the window has left.
                Thread.sleep(response.headers().firstValueAsLong("Retry-After").orElse(1) * 1000);
            } else if (status == 429 && code.equals("concurrency_limit")) {
                // Every parallel slot on your plan is busy with your own requests.
                Thread.sleep((1L << attempt) * 1000);
            } else if (status == 504) {
                // Still running on our side; the token collects it from GET /result/:token.
                throw new URLpipeException(
                    "504 processing_timeout: collect it later with token " + error.get("token").getAsString());
            } else {
                // 403 email_unverified, 422 (a bad parameter, or a page that would not load),
                // 429 quota_exceeded: sending the same request again gets the same answer.
                throw new URLpipeException(status + ": " + detail);
            }
        }
        throw new URLpipeException("429: still refused after " + attempts + " attempts");
    }

    public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
        String body;
        try {
            body = urlpipe("/html", """
                {"url": "https://example.com", "sync": true}
                """);
        } catch (URLpipeException e) {
            System.err.println("URLpipe: " + e.getMessage());
            System.exit(1);
            return;
        }

        Files.writeString(Path.of("page.html"), body);
        System.out.println("Saved page.html (" + body.getBytes(StandardCharsets.UTF_8).length + " bytes)");
    }
}

Run it: java -cp gson-2.13.1.jar RenderedHtmlErrors.java

Details

What to know about /html

  • The HTML is serialized from the live DOM, so it is well-formed but not byte-identical to any file on the server.
  • Pages over 10 MB of HTML are refused with The page is too big to be processed.
  • page_options.wait_for_selector waits for an element that loads late; delay waits a fixed time on top.
  • It is the whole document, scripts and styles included, not a cleaned-up version of it. For clean text, use Markdown instead.

Other languages

Get the rendered HTML of a JavaScript page in another language

More Java: every Java recipe

FAQ

Frequently asked questions

How is this different from fetching the URL myself?
A plain GET returns what the server sent before any JavaScript ran. /html returns the DOM after the page's scripts ran in real Chrome — the HTML a visitor's browser actually holds.
Can I wait for content that loads late?
Yes: page_options.wait_for_selector waits up to 10 seconds for an element to appear, and delay adds a fixed wait. If the element never appears the request is a 422 and costs nothing.
Does URLpipe follow robots.txt?
Yes, by default, for every project. You can turn it off per project, and then you are responsible for having the right to fetch those pages.
Do I need an SDK to call URLpipe from Java?
No SDK. HttpClient is in the JDK; the programs that read JSON add Gson, one jar, because the JDK has no parser.

Get a key and run it.

Free plan, no card. Paste your key into URLPIPE_API_KEY and every program on this page runs as it is.