[[webflux-client]]
= WebClient
:page-section-summary-toc: 1

Spring WebFlux includes a client to perform HTTP requests with. `WebClient` has a
functional, fluent API based on Reactor, see xref:web-reactive.adoc#webflux-reactive-libraries[Reactive Libraries],
which enables declarative composition of asynchronous logic without the need to deal with
threads or concurrency. It is fully non-blocking, it supports streaming, and relies on
the same xref:web/webflux/reactive-spring.adoc#webflux-codecs[codecs] that are also used to encode and
decode request and response content on the server side.

`WebClient` needs an HTTP client library to perform requests with. There is built-in
support for the following:

* https://github.com/reactor/reactor-netty[Reactor Netty]
* https://docs.oracle.com/en/java/javase/11/docs/api/java.net.http/java/net/http/HttpClient.html[JDK HttpClient]
* https://github.com/jetty-project/jetty-reactive-httpclient[Jetty Reactive HttpClient]
* https://hc.apache.org/index.html[Apache HttpComponents]
* Others can be plugged via `ClientHttpConnector`.