HTTP Basic Auth and Proxy Auth

Question

Hi,
i have a problem with the authentication against a proxy server and against a content provider. At first I have to authenticate against the proxy to get "free internet". The next step is to authenticate against the content provider to get a html or xml file.
The following source code runs very good in Eclipse, i.e. as JUnitTest. But If I execute the same code within a weblogic server, I will get an error (not authenticated). I believe I get this message from the content provider and not from the proxy because If I test this code within the weblogic server and with no authentication (i.e. google needs no authentication), I will get a valide xml/html file.
StringBuffer sb = new StringBuffer();
          SimpleAuthenticator simple = new SimpleAuthenticator("joeuser","a.b.C.D"); //from openbook
          Authenticator.setDefault(simple);
          String strUrl = "http://www.rahul.net/joeuser/";
          URL url = null;
          try {
               url = new URL(strUrl);
          } catch (MalformedURLException e) {
               // TODO Auto-generated catch block
               e.printStackTrace();
          URLConnection conn = null;
          InetSocketAddress addr = new InetSocketAddress("proxy.domain",8080);
          Proxy proxy = new Proxy(Proxy.Type.HTTP, addr);
          try {
               conn = url.openConnection(proxy);
          } catch (IOException e) {
               // TODO Auto-generated catch block
               e.printStackTrace();
          String proxyStr = "username" + ":" + "passwordl";
          String encoded = new String(Base64.encodeBase64(proxyStr.getBytes()));
          conn.setRequestProperty("Proxy-Authorization", "Basic " + encoded);
          // get http status code which is located in header field 0
          String status = conn.getHeaderField(0);
          if (status.contains("200")) {
               BufferedReader in = null;
               try {
                    in = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(conn.getInputStream(),
                              "ISO-8859-1"));
                    String inputLine;
                    while ((inputLine = in.readLine()) != null) {
                         sb.append(inputLine);
                    in.close();
               } catch (UnsupportedEncodingException e) {
                    // TODO Auto-generated catch block
                    e.printStackTrace();
               } catch (IOException e) {
                    // TODO Auto-generated catch block
                    e.printStackTrace();
          else {
               System.out.println("Error");
          System.out.println(sb.toString());
public class SimpleAuthenticator
extends Authenticator
     private String username,
     password;
     public SimpleAuthenticator(String username,String password)
          this.username = username;
          this.password = password;
     protected PasswordAuthentication getPasswordAuthentication()
          return new PasswordAuthentication(
                    username,password.toCharArray());
Does somebody know a solution? I need the authentication against proxy and content provider in "one application".
Thank you very much,
André

Answer 1

I typically have used Apache Commons HttpClient for anything but trivial URL connections, and especially when combining both basic auth and proxy auth. When you use it, be aware of the "preemptive authentication" flag. One server I worked with didn't send the correct parameters back on particular requests, so I had to turn on this flag to get it to work.