Map<Integer, String> or String[] ?

Hi Friends,

I am creating a Java EE client where I need to make a call to a node (js) server to get the response. So I made a single class through which requests are made to node server.
Everytime I get a response, I need to send back the response code and the response itself. So I thought of creating a String array which would contain the response code and the response.

Here is my class:

import javax.ws.rs.core.MediaType; import com.sun.jersey.api.client.Client; import com.sun.jersey.api.client.ClientResponse; import com.sun.jersey.api.client.WebResource; import com.sun.jersey.api.client.config.ClientConfig; import com.sun.jersey.api.client.config.DefaultClientConfig; import com.sun.jersey.api.client.filter.LoggingFilter; import com.sun.jersey.core.impl.provider.entity.StringProvider; public class RequestHandler { /** * Makes a HTTP Request for a given url. The type * determines which type of request, post or get, * will be made. The params cane be in form of * name=value pair or JSON format. * * @param type Request method. 1 - Get, 2 - Post. * @param url url string to which request has to be * made. * @param path path of the resource or service for a * url. * @param params request parameters. Can be either * name=value pair or JSON request. * * @return String representation of the response. * */ public static String[] makeRequest(int type, String url, String path, String params) { String[] response = new String[2]; ClientResponse clientResponse = null; try { ClientConfig config = new DefaultClientConfig(); config.getClasses().add(StringProvider.class); Client client = Client.create(config); WebResource service = client.resource(url); client.addFilter(new LoggingFilter()); service.path("rest"); // 1 - GET, 2 - POST switch (type) { case 1: { System.out.println("Making GET request to: " + url + path); System.out.println("Request Params: " + params); clientResponse = service.path(path).type(MediaType.APPLICATION_JSON_TYPE).accept(MediaType.APPLICATION_JSON).get(ClientResponse.class); //TODO Code to be corrected, include params break; } case 2: { System.out.println("Making POST request to: " + url + path); System.out.println("Request Params: " + params); clientResponse = service.path(path).type(MediaType.APPLICATION_JSON_TYPE).accept(MediaType.APPLICATION_JSON).post(ClientResponse.class, params); break; } } } catch (Exception e) { e.printStackTrace(); response[0] = "500"; response[1] = "Internal Server Error"; return response; } response[0] = String.valueOf(clientResponse.getStatus()); response[1] = clientResponse.getEntity(String.class); System.err.println("Response status: " + response[0]); return response; }//end of makeRequest() }//end of class

But I am not convinced by creating too much string objects which would cause performance issues. So I thought of creating a Map<Integer, String> which would send back the response code and the response.

response.put(500, "Internal Server Error");

But again, creating a map with integer and checking everytime the response code creates overhead of boxing and unboxing of Integer object, which again could result in performance.

HashMap<Integer, String> response = RequestHandler.makeRequest(2, urlString, "/login", params); if (response.get(500) { return Message.INTERNAL_SERVER_ERROR; }

Which one should I use? Or is there any better alternative out of it?

As from your code excerpt, I see that you'll send back for each response exactly two string values. I think that with so few data to be sent, performance overhead should be negligible; I just only guess that from a JSON's perspective, handling string arrays instead of maps would be more efficient. But it's just a guess.