android app crashing when trying to convert inputstream to string

Question

in the following code, i am trying to perform a GET operation on a webservice that i have coded and hosted on localhost. The method OpenHttpConnection is working just fine because i have put toasts in between to check if there was sth wrong in there. the app crashes when i try to convert the input stream into a string using the bufferreader. Please have a look and see if you can spot the error.

Thanks :)

public class ServicetestActivity extends Activity {



public static String iStream_to_String(InputStream is1)
{
     BufferedReader rd = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(is1));
     String line;
     StringBuilder sb =  new StringBuilder();
     try {
        while ((line = rd.readLine()) != null) {
                sb.append(line);
         }
         rd.close();

    } catch (IOException e) {
        // TODO Auto-generated catch block
        e.printStackTrace();
    }
     String contentOfMyInputStream = sb.toString();
     return contentOfMyInputStream;
}






/** Called when the activity is first created. */
@Override
public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
    super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
    setContentView(R.layout.main);
    InputStream is=null;
    try {
         is=OpenHttpConnection("http://localhost/webservice.php?device=ayaz");
    } catch (IOException e) {
        // TODO Auto-generated catch block
        e.printStackTrace();
    }
    String line= iStream_to_String(is);
    Toast.makeText(this, line, Toast.LENGTH_LONG).show(); 
}


    private InputStream OpenHttpConnection(String link) throws IOException {
        // TODO Auto-generated method stub
        InputStream inputStream = null;
        int response = -1;
        Toast.makeText(this, "1", Toast.LENGTH_SHORT).show();
        URL url = new URL(link);
        URLConnection connection = url.openConnection();
        Toast.makeText(this, "2", Toast.LENGTH_SHORT).show();
        if (!(connection instanceof HttpURLConnection))
          throw new IOException("Not a HTTP connection");
        try {
            HttpURLConnection httpURLConnection = (HttpURLConnection) connection;
            Toast.makeText(this, "3", Toast.LENGTH_SHORT).show();
            httpURLConnection.setAllowUserInteraction(false);
            Toast.makeText(this, "4", Toast.LENGTH_SHORT).show();
            httpURLConnection.setInstanceFollowRedirects(true);
            httpURLConnection.setRequestMethod("GET");
            httpURLConnection.connect();
            response = httpURLConnection.getResponseCode();
            if (response == HttpURLConnection.HTTP_OK) {
                inputStream = httpURLConnection.getInputStream();
            }

        } catch (Exception e) {
            // TODO: handle exception
            throw new IOException("Error connecting");
        }
        return inputStream;}

// see http://androidsnippets.com/executing-a-http-get-request-with-httpclient

}

Also the log cat is as follows:

10-14 20:54:13.660: E/AndroidRuntime(1348): FATAL EXCEPTION: main
10-14 20:54:13.660: E/AndroidRuntime(1348): java.lang.RuntimeException: Unable to start activity ComponentInfo{web.service/web.service.ServicetestActivity}: java.lang.NullPointerException
10-14 20:54:13.660: E/AndroidRuntime(1348):     at android.app.ActivityThread.performLaunchActivity(ActivityThread.java:1647)
10-14 20:54:13.660: E/AndroidRuntime(1348):     at android.app.ActivityThread.handleLaunchActivity(ActivityThread.java:1663)
10-14 20:54:13.660: E/AndroidRuntime(1348):     at android.app.ActivityThread.access$1500(ActivityThread.java:117)
10-14 20:54:13.660: E/AndroidRuntime(1348):     at android.app.ActivityThread$H.handleMessage(ActivityThread.java:931)
10-14 20:54:13.660: E/AndroidRuntime(1348):     at android.os.Handler.dispatchMessage(Handler.java:99)
10-14 20:54:13.660: E/AndroidRuntime(1348):     at android.os.Looper.loop(Looper.java:130)
10-14 20:54:13.660: E/AndroidRuntime(1348):     at android.app.ActivityThread.main(ActivityThread.java:3683)
10-14 20:54:13.660: E/AndroidRuntime(1348):     at java.lang.reflect.Method.invokeNative(Native Method)
10-14 20:54:13.660: E/AndroidRuntime(1348):     at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:507)
10-14 20:54:13.660: E/AndroidRuntime(1348):     at com.android.internal.os.ZygoteInit$MethodAndArgsCaller.run(ZygoteInit.java:839)
10-14 20:54:13.660: E/AndroidRuntime(1348):     at com.android.internal.os.ZygoteInit.main(ZygoteInit.java:597)
10-14 20:54:13.660: E/AndroidRuntime(1348):     at dalvik.system.NativeStart.main(Native Method)
10-14 20:54:13.660: E/AndroidRuntime(1348): Caused by: java.lang.NullPointerException
10-14 20:54:13.660: E/AndroidRuntime(1348):     at java.io.Reader.<init>(Reader.java:65)
10-14 20:54:13.660: E/AndroidRuntime(1348):     at java.io.InputStreamReader.<init>(InputStreamReader.java:122)
10-14 20:54:13.660: E/AndroidRuntime(1348):     at java.io.InputStreamReader.<init>(InputStreamReader.java:59)
10-14 20:54:13.660: E/AndroidRuntime(1348):     at web.service.ServicetestActivity.iStream_to_String(ServicetestActivity.java:31)
10-14 20:54:13.660: E/AndroidRuntime(1348):     at web.service.ServicetestActivity.onCreate(ServicetestActivity.java:65)
10-14 20:54:13.660: E/AndroidRuntime(1348):     at android.app.Instrumentation.callActivityOnCreate(Instrumentation.java:1047)
10-14 20:54:13.660: E/AndroidRuntime(1348):     at android.app.ActivityThread.performLaunchActivity(ActivityThread.java:1611)
10-14 20:54:13.660: E/AndroidRuntime(1348):     ... 11 more

Answer 1

I got my problem solved. The problem was not in buffer reader but my connection was being refused. The connection was being refused because the link that I passed referred to localhost(my machine). But in actuality Android takes localhost as the emulator itself, and since there was no server hosted it kept on refusing the connection. The solution to this is that I used my machine's ip instead of localhost so it would be http://x.x.x.x/......