Why does HttpURLConnection not send the HTTP request

Question

I would like to open an URL and submit the following parameters to it, but it only seems to work if I add the BufferedReader to my code. Why is that?

Send.php is a script what will add an username with a time to my database.

This following code does not work (it does not submit any data to my database):

        final String base = "http://awebsite.com//send.php?";
        final String params = String.format("username=%s&time=%s", username, time);
        final URL url = new URL(base + params);

        final HttpURLConnection connection = (HttpURLConnection) url.openConnection();
        connection.setRequestProperty("User-Agent", "Agent");
        connection.setRequestMethod("POST");
        connection.setRequestProperty("Content-Type", "application/x-www-form-urlencoded");

        connection.connect();

But this code does work:

        final String base = "http://awebsite.com//send.php?";
        final String params = String.format("username=%s&time=%s", username, time);
        final URL url = new URL(base + params);

        final HttpURLConnection connection = (HttpURLConnection) url.openConnection();
        connection.setRequestProperty("User-Agent", "Agent");
        connection.setRequestMethod("POST");
        connection.setRequestProperty("Content-Type", "application/x-www-form-urlencoded");

        connection.connect();

        final BufferedReader in = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(connection.getInputStream()));
        String line;
        while ((line = in.readLine()) != null) {
            System.out.println(line);
        }

        connection.disconnect();

Answer 1

As far as I know. When you called the connect() function, it will only create the connection.

You need to at least call the getInputStream() or getResponseCode() for the connection to be committed so that the server that the url is pointing to able to process the request.