I am trying to write a simple Http client application in Java and am a bit confused by the seemingly different ways to establish Http client connections, and efficiently re-use the objects.

Current I am using the following steps (I have left out exception handling for simplicity)

Iterator<URI> uriIterator = someURIs();

HttpClient client = new DefaultHttpClient();

while (uriIterator.hasNext()) {
   URI uri = uriIterator.next();

   HttpGet request = new HttpGet(uri);

   HttpResponse response = client.execute(request);

   HttpEntity entity = response.getEntity();

   InputStream s = entity.getContent();
   processStream ();
   s.close();
}

In regard to the code above, my questions is:

Assuming all URI's are pointing to the same host (but different resources on that host). What is the recommended way to use a single http connection for all requests?

And how do you close the connection after the last request?

--edit: Also what is the difference between using uri.openConnection(), versus HttpClient? Which is preferable, and what other methods exist?