Accessing Tomcat Manager Via URLConnection

Question

Hi,
Does anyone know how to access Tomcat Manager using URLConnection? or Can it be done at all?
I'm using URLConnection, javax.mail.authenticator, and javax.mail.PasswordAuthentication. It seems that I can get to the correct URL, but the servlet can't get pass thru the login dialog box(username ,password)
for example if you're using Tomcat 5 and type http://localhost/manager/reload?path=/, this will prompt you a login dialog box and if you enter correct username and password with manager role, tomcat will reload the ROOT web application
I want to get pass that login box, but my servlet doesn't seem to work.
Here's my code so far:
package reload;
import javax.mail.*;
import javax.servlet.*;
import javax.servlet.http.*;
import java.io.*;
import java.net.*;
public class Reload extends HttpServlet
     public void doGet(HttpServletRequest request, HttpServletResponse response)
                              throws ServletException, IOException
          URL url = new URL("http://localhost/manager/reload?path=/");
          URLConnection connection = url.openConnection();
           //----------------------------------Output Stream to supply username and password---
        javax.mail.Authenticator auth = new Auth();
          connection.setDoOutput(true);
          PrintWriter out = new PrintWriter(connection.getOutputStream());
          out.println(auth);   //this is supposed to supply the username and password to Tomcat
          out.close();
            //--------------------------------Input Stream to get content result-------------------
          BufferedReader in = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(connection.getInputStream()));
          String inputLine;
          while ((inputLine = in.readLine()) != null)
               response.setContentType("text/html");
               PrintWriter out1 = response.getWriter();
               out1.println(inputLine);
          in.close();
       //-------------------sub class to store username and password-------------------------------
     private class Auth extends javax.mail.Authenticator
         public javax.mail.PasswordAuthentication getPasswordAuthentication()
             return (new javax.mail.PasswordAuthentication("test","123"));
}

Answer 1

The manager application uses basic authentication. Therefore, you need to add a header to the request you make to the manager URL. Below is an example:
HttpURLConnection httpconn = (HttpURLConnection)connection;
String auth = strUsername + ":" + strPassword;
httpconn.setRequestProperty("Authorization", "Basic " + Base64.encode(auth.getBytes()));
The Base64 class is in the package org.apache.catalina.util, which is located in the file catalina-ant.jar. Here, I used it as a convenience.
I also recommend re-writing your input/output loop to:
BufferedReader in = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(connection.getInputStream()));
String inputLine;          
PrintWriter out1 = response.getWriter();
response.setContentType("text/html");               
while ((inputLine = in.readLine()) != null)     {
     out1.println(inputLine);
in.close();
I hope this helps.