Http Basic Authentication in Java using HttpClient

Question

I am trying to mimic the functionality of this curl command in Java:

curl --basic --user username:password -d "" http://ipaddress/test/login

I wrote the following using Commons HttpClient 3.0 but somehow ended up getting an 500 Internal Server Error from the server. Can someone tell me if I'm doing anything wrong?

public class HttpBasicAuth {

    private static final String ENCODING = "UTF-8";

    /**
     * @param args
     */
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        // TODO Auto-generated method stub
        try {

            HttpClient client = new HttpClient();

            client.getState().setCredentials(
                    new AuthScope("ipaddress", 443, "realm"),
                    new UsernamePasswordCredentials("test1", "test1")
                    );

            PostMethod post = new PostMethod(
                    "http://address/test/login");

            post.setDoAuthentication( true );

            try {
                int status = client.executeMethod( post );
                System.out.println(status + "\n" + post.getResponseBodyAsString());
            } finally {
                // release any connection resources used by the method
                post.releaseConnection();
            }
        } catch (Exception e) {
            // TODO Auto-generated catch block
            e.printStackTrace();
        }
    }
   } 

And I later tried a Commons HttpClient 4.0.1 but still the same error:

import java.io.BufferedReader;
import java.io.IOException;
import java.io.InputStream;
import java.io.InputStreamReader;

import org.apache.http.HttpEntity;
import org.apache.http.HttpResponse;
import org.apache.http.auth.AuthScope;
import org.apache.http.auth.UsernamePasswordCredentials;
import org.apache.http.client.ClientProtocolException;
import org.apache.http.client.methods.HttpPost;
import org.apache.http.impl.client.DefaultHttpClient;


public class HttpBasicAuth {

    private static final String ENCODING = "UTF-8";

    /**
     * @param args
     */
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        // TODO Auto-generated method stub

        try {
            DefaultHttpClient httpclient = new DefaultHttpClient();

            httpclient.getCredentialsProvider().setCredentials(
                    new AuthScope(AuthScope.ANY_HOST, AuthScope.ANY_PORT), 
                    new UsernamePasswordCredentials("test1", "test1"));

            HttpPost httppost = new HttpPost("http://host:post/test/login");

            System.out.println("executing request " + httppost.getRequestLine());
            HttpResponse response;
            response = httpclient.execute(httppost);
            HttpEntity entity = response.getEntity();

            System.out.println("----------------------------------------");
            System.out.println(response.getStatusLine());
            if (entity != null) {
                System.out.println("Response content length: " + entity.getContentLength());
            }
            if (entity != null) {
                entity.consumeContent();
            }

            httpclient.getConnectionManager().shutdown();  
        } catch (ClientProtocolException e) {
            // TODO Auto-generated catch block
            e.printStackTrace();
        } catch (IOException e) {
            // TODO Auto-generated catch block
            e.printStackTrace();
        }
}

Answer 1

for HttpClient always use HttpRequestInterceptor for example

httclient.addRequestInterceptor(new HttpRequestInterceptor() {
    public void process(HttpRequest arg0, HttpContext context) throws HttpException, IOException {
        AuthState state = (AuthState) context.getAttribute(ClientContext.TARGET_AUTH_STATE);
        if (state.getAuthScheme() == null) {
            BasicScheme scheme = new BasicScheme();
            CredentialsProvider credentialsProvider = (CredentialsProvider) context.getAttribute(ClientContext.CREDS_PROVIDER);
            Credentials credentials = credentialsProvider.getCredentials(AuthScope.ANY);
            if (credentials == null) {
                System.out.println("Credential >>" + credentials);
                throw new HttpException();
            }
            state.setAuthScope(AuthScope.ANY);
            state.setAuthScheme(scheme);
            state.setCredentials(credentials);
        }
    }
}, 0);

Answer 2

A small update - hopefully useful for somebody - it works for me in my project:

• I use the nice Public Domain class Base64.java from Robert Harder (Thanks Robert - Code availble here: Base64 - download and put it in your package).

• and make a download of a file (image, doc, etc.) with authentication and write to local disk

Example:

import java.io.BufferedOutputStream;
import java.io.File;
import java.io.FileOutputStream;
import java.io.InputStream;
import java.io.OutputStream;
import java.net.HttpURLConnection;
import java.net.URL;

public class HttpBasicAuth {

public static void downloadFileWithAuth(String urlStr, String user, String pass, String outFilePath) {
    try {
        // URL url = new URL ("http://ip:port/download_url");
        URL url = new URL(urlStr);
        String authStr = user + ":" + pass;
        String authEncoded = Base64.encodeBytes(authStr.getBytes());

        HttpURLConnection connection = (HttpURLConnection) url.openConnection();
        connection.setRequestMethod("GET");
        connection.setDoOutput(true);
        connection.setRequestProperty("Authorization", "Basic " + authEncoded);

        File file = new File(outFilePath);
        InputStream in = (InputStream) connection.getInputStream();
        OutputStream out = new BufferedOutputStream(new FileOutputStream(file));
        for (int b; (b = in.read()) != -1;) {
            out.write(b);
        }
        out.close();
        in.close();
    }
    catch (Exception e) {
        e.printStackTrace();
    }
}
}

Answer 3

while using Header array

String auth = Base64.getEncoder().encodeToString(("test1:test1").getBytes());
Header[] headers = {
    new BasicHeader(HTTP.CONTENT_TYPE, ContentType.APPLICATION_JSON.toString()),
    new BasicHeader("Authorization", "Basic " +auth)
};

Answer 4

Have you tried this (using HttpClient version 4)

String encoding = Base64Encoder.encode ("test1:test1");
HttpPost httppost = new HttpPost("http://host:post/test/login");
httppost.setHeader("Authorization", "Basic " + encoding);

System.out.println("executing request " + httppost.getRequestLine());
HttpResponse response = httpclient.execute(httppost);
HttpEntity entity = response.getEntity();

Answer 5

HttpBasicAuth works for me with smaller changes

1. I use maven dependency

   <dependency>
       <groupId>net.iharder</groupId>
       <artifactId>base64</artifactId>
       <version>2.3.8</version>
   </dependency>
   

2. Smaller change

   String encoding = Base64.encodeBytes ((user + ":" + passwd).getBytes());
   

Answer 6

Here are a few points:

• You could consider upgrading to HttpClient 4 (generally speaking, if you can, I don't think version 3 is still actively supported).

• A 500 status code is a server error, so it might be useful to see what the server says (any clue in the response body you're printing?). Although it might be caused by your client, the server shouldn't fail this way (a 4xx error code would be more appropriate if the request is incorrect).

• I think setDoAuthentication(true) is the default (not sure). What could be useful to try is pre-emptive authentication works better:

  client.getParams().setAuthenticationPreemptive(true);
  

Otherwise, the main difference between curl -d "" and what you're doing in Java is that, in addition to Content-Length: 0, curl also sends Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded. Note that in terms of design, you should probably send an entity with your POST request anyway.