HttpURLConnection not connecting to all sites

Question

Hi folks,
I have a small class which takes a URL as commandline input and outputs the HTML to stdout:
import java.net.*;
import java.io.*;
public class URLReader {
    public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
     URL url = new URL(args[0]);
     HttpURLConnection conn = (HttpURLConnection) url.openConnection();
     conn.setDoInput(true);
     conn.setDoOutput(true);
     OutputStream os = conn.getOutputStream(); // Line 1
     os.close(); // Line 2
     conn.connect(); // Line 3
     BufferedReader in = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(conn.getInputStream()));
     String inputLine;
     while ((inputLine = in.readLine()) != null) {
          System.out.println(inputLine);
     in.close();
}If I try this:
java URLReader http://www.asp.com
I get the error:
=====
Exception in thread "main" java.io.IOException: Server returned HTTP response code: 405 for URL: http://www.asp.com
at sun.net.www.protocol.http.HttpURLConnection.getInputStream(HttpURLConnection.java:575)
at URLReader.main(URLReader.java:18)
=====
But, if I comment out the lines marked as Line 1, Line 2 and Line 3 it works fine and returns me the HTML.
Why would opening the Output Stream cause this?
Thanks in advance!
Musafir

Answer 1

Thanks for the response - sort of what I was guessing.
But, to me this behaviour is a bit counter-intuitive.
If I am making a GET request (in the request header),
then the request body should simply be ignored. To
disallow it altogether and produce errors is, IMHO,
undesirable behaviour.Some people are more paranoid that others and like to lock things uo tight.
What is more, it works for a very large number of
sites - www.bea.com, www.slashdot.org. It even works
for www.microsoft.com and www.msdn.microsoft.com!!Again it depends on the people running the site.
As a follow-up, what would I be doing in my Server
Side App to disallow request bodies when making a GET
request? Is it a Web Server setting?It can be done in the web server configuration or handled with in the code.
Thanks for the tip! Warm regards,
Musafir