Steps that I am trying to perform the following steps through Java:
1) Connect to a sharepoint site with a given URL.
2) Get the list of files listed on that
You can use JShare from here : JShare API
It supports Microsoft SharePoint server 2013 and SharePoint Online / Office 365
I have developed a Sharepoint Rest API java wrapper that allows you to use most common operations of the rest API.
https://github.com/kikovalle/PLGSharepointRestAPI-java
With SharePoint 2013, the REST services will make your life easier. In previous versions, you could use the good old SOAP web services.
For instance, you could connect to a list with this query on the REST API:
http://server/site/_api/lists/getbytitle('listname')/items
This will give you all items from that list. With OData you can do additional stuff like filtering:
$filter=StartDate ge datetime'2015-05-21T00%3a00%3a00'
Additionally, you can provide CAML queries to these services, allowing you to define detailed queries. Here's an example in Javascript:
var re = new SP.RequestExecutor(webUrl);
re.executeAsync({
url: "http://server/site/_api/web/lists/getbytitle('listname')/GetItems",
method: 'POST',
headers: {
"Accept": "application/json; odata=verbose",
"Content-Type": "application/json; odata=verbose"
},
body: {
"query" : {
"__metadata": {
"type": "SP.CamlQuery"
},
"ViewXml": "<View>" +
"<Query>" + query + "</Query>" +
"</View>"
}
},
success: successHandler,
error: errorHandler
});
If all of this doesn't provide enough flexibility, you might as well take these list items in memory and do additional work in your (server side) code.