Sending "Cookie" header with JRE 1.5.0_07 doesn't work with JWS

Question

Hi
I have a JWS application that runs from JRE 1.4.0_XX to JRE 1.5.0_06
The app sends a "Cookie" header to our webserver
HttpURLConnection tc = (HttpURLConnection)repository.openConnection();
tc.setRequestProperty("Cookie", "GLINK=TOKENID");
Now this has worked thru 20 different runtime versions since 1.4.0_xx until JRE 1.5.0_07 was released. My code has remained unchanged for 3 years. And with JRE 1.5.0_07 the "Cookie" header is simply gone in the webserver or never sent at all. The changelog for 1.5.0_07 only has a rough description of what has changed. I can see that SUN has made som changes to class HttpUrlConnection in 1.5.0_07 by comparing class files against 1.5.0_06 and apparently disturbed som funtionality that worked before. Other headers are received but not the "Cookie" header. If the application is executed without JWS, for example with Eclipse or Jbuilder, the "Cookie" header is received by the web server and all other headers as well.
Any ideas what SUN has done in 1.5.0_07 and JWS ?? and more specifically in class URLConnection or HttpURLConnection.
Here is some code example to test the issue:
Run this code with and without Java Web Start
With JWS, the "Cookie" header is never received by the server.
without JWS, the header value is reveived.
import java.net.*;
import java.io.*;
public class HTTPTest
public static byte[] crLfArr = {13,10};
public static String contenttype_ = "text/plain";
public static BufferedReader retval = null;
public static void main(String[] args) throws IOException
int tecken = (int)'X';
String boundary = "12345xyzzy";
URL repository = new URL("http://myserver");
URLConnection tc = (URLConnection)repository.openConnection();
tc.setDoOutput(true);
tc.setDoInput(true);
tc.setAllowUserInteraction(false);
tc.setRequestProperty("Content-Type"," multipart/form-data; boundary=" + boundary);
tc.setRequestProperty("Cookie", "GLINK=TOKENID");
OutputStream out = tc.getOutputStream();
printPartHeader(out, boundary, "filtag" , "filnamn");
out.write(tecken);
printEndBoundary(out,boundary);
out.close();
retval = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(tc.getInputStream()));
public static void printEndBoundary(OutputStream out, String boundary) throws IOException
String str;
str = "--" + boundary + "--";
out.write(str.getBytes());
out.write(crLfArr);
out.write(crLfArr);
public static void printPartHeader(OutputStream out,
String boundary,
String field,
String filename) throws IOException
String str;
printBoundary(out,boundary);
str = "Content-Disposition: form-data; name=\"" + field + "\"";
out.write(str.getBytes());
if (filename.length() > 0) {
str = "; filename=\"" + filename + "\"";
out.write(str.getBytes());
out.write(crLfArr);
str = "Content-Type: " + contenttype_;
out.write(str.getBytes());
out.write(crLfArr);
out.write(crLfArr);
public static void printBoundary(OutputStream out, String boundary) throws IOException
String str;
str = "--" + boundary;
out.write(str.getBytes());
out.write(crLfArr);
Regards
Jojje

Answer 1

Hi,
I decompiled the HttpURLConnection implementation in question from the rt.jar file. I do not think that you can find the source code for these SUN-specific implementations anywhere (except maybe through the new Java 6.0 collaboration process).
JAD did the trick.
For the standard classes (packages java.*, javax.*), I think that the most current source code is included in the corresponding JDK download.
As to the JWS vs. standalone effect, I do not know what happens there.
Maybe Java uses a different HttpURLConnection implementation when running as a standalone application?
For our applet, the problem is definitely there. The cookie header was set but already removed when the CookieHandler method was called.
The trouble is, that our applet can operate multiple independent sessions (with different session-ids), so a global CookieHandler is not an option. The only reason why I previously had to implement my own CookieHandler implementation in 1.5 was in order to remove unwanted Cookies which were otherwise inherited from the browser session by the CookieHandler�s applet default implementation.
I also entered a bug report (on Wednesday already)...
regards,
Gunnar