Reading Web Data is S-L-O-W

From:

Hal Vaughan <hal@thresholddigital.com>

Newsgroups:

comp.lang.java.programmer

Date:

Tue, 12 Sep 2006 10:53:21 -0400

Message-ID:

<t_udnUpK-qxEVJvYnZ2dnUVZ_s2dnZ2d@comcast.com>

I am experimenting with reading a data file from the web. In Firefox, I go
to an HTML page that is a form, enter the data for the form, then click
on "Submit", which calls a Perl program that outputs the data to Firefox.
The file is 173,910 bytes long and I'm using Apache2 on Linux on the
backend. When I do this on Firefox, the file comes back so quickly I can't
time it -- almost instantaneous.

I'm trying to read the same file in Java with the method at the bottom of
the post. When I first tried it with this file, it took so long (literally
at least 3-4 minutes), that I finally added in some debugging statements
that are commented out below (like printing a dot after each line was read
in so I could verify it was working).

I need to read this file and longer ones in quickly. I have very little
experience with network programming, in Java or in other languages. The
code is based on examples in tutorials and other places. What can I do to
get this method to work quickly? My guess is the slowdown is caused by
continually adding more and more text to a String. Should I be handling
the buffering or input differently?

What puzzles me is this code is similar to not just one, but several
examples I found while using Google to find tutorials and examples. Are
tutorials teaching us inefficient techniques, or is this more a "learning"
way to do it with better ones available?

Any helpful ideas or links are greatly appreciated.

Hal
==================
Java Method In use:

public String connect(String sURL, String messageText) {
        String sLine, resultPage = "";
        URL uPage;
        URLConnection ucPage = null;
        BufferedReader inRead;
        PrintWriter outPrint;

        try {
// System.out.println("URL: " + sURL);
                uPage = new URL(sURL);
                ucPage = uPage.openConnection();
                ucPage.setDoOutput(true);
                ucPage.setDoInput(true);
                outPrint = new PrintWriter(ucPage.getOutputStream());
                System.out.println("Outgoing data:\n" + messageText);
                outPrint.print(messageText);
                outPrint.close();
                inRead = new BufferedReader(new
                        InputStreamReader(ucPage.getInputStream()));
                resultPage = "";
                while ((sLine = inRead.readLine()) != null) {
// System.out.print(".");
                        resultPage = resultPage + sLine + "\n";
                }
                System.out.println("\nIncoming message complete.");
// System.out.println("Result:\n-------------------------\n" +
// resultPage + "\n-------------------------\n");
                        inRead.close();
                } catch (Exception e) {
                        resultPage = "error: connection incomplete";
                        e.printStackTrace();
                }
                return resultPage;
        }