how to set authorization header with android's httpURLconnection

Joe Ryan picture Joe Ryan · Dec 21, 2015 · Viewed 23.4k times · Source

I am attempting to connect to my server using basic authentication, but when I set the Authorization header, it causes getInputStream to throw a fileNotFound exception.

Here is the relevant code:

        URL url = new URL(myurl);
        //set up the connection
        HttpURLConnection conn = (HttpURLConnection) url.openConnection();
        conn.setReadTimeout(10000);//this is in milliseconds
        conn.setConnectTimeout(15000);//this is in milliseconds
        String authHeader = getAuthHeader(userID,pass);
        conn.setRequestMethod("GET");
        conn.setDoInput(true);
        conn.setRequestProperty("authorization", authHeader);
        //starts the query
        conn.connect();
        int response = conn.getResponseCode();
        is = conn.getInputStream(); //throws the fileNotFound exception

Here is the thrown exception:

java.io.FileNotFoundException: http://<myIPaddress>/login/

Weirdly enough, I have found that the fileNotFound exception is only thrown if I try to set the request property to "authorization" or "Authorization" or any variation of that word. it is not thrown if I set it to "content-type" or "authosodifjsodfjs" (a random string), as here:

conn.setRequestProperty("content-type",authHeader)//no exception thrown
conn.setRequestProperty("authosodifjsodfjs",authHeader)//no exception thrown

If I don't set this header, I am able to connect to the server with this code and get the proper access-denied message that I am expecting. I am also able to connect to the server and login properly if I use python's "requests" module, so it is not a problem with the server.

so my question is as follows:

1) what, if anything, am I doing wrong when setting the request property as "authorization"? how do I set the auth header properly?

2) if this is a bug with HttpURLConnection, how do I file a bug report?

Thank you.

edit: it was recommended to switch from:

conn.setRequestProperty("Authorization", authHeader);

to:

conn.addRequestProperty("Authorization", authHeader);

This did not fix the problem. It is still throwing the same exception.

EDIT: still not sure why "Authorization" and "authorization" are causing fileNotFounExceptions, but using all caps seems to work properly. here is the shiny new working code:

conn.setRequestProperty("AUTHORIZATION",authHeader);

so it looks like it needs to be all caps. "HTTP_" will be automattically added to the front of this header, so the header that the server will see is "HTTP_AUTHORIZATION", which is what it should be.

Answer

marcinj picture marcinj · Dec 21, 2015

Here is part of my OAuth code which sets Authorization header:

httpUrlConnection.setUseCaches(false);
httpUrlConnection.setRequestProperty("User-Agent", "MyAgent");
httpUrlConnection.setConnectTimeout(30000);
httpUrlConnection.setReadTimeout(30000);

String baseAuthStr = APIKEY + ":" + APISECRET;
httpUrlConnection.addRequestProperty("Authorization", "Basic " + baseAuthStr);
httpUrlConnection.addRequestProperty("Content-Type", "application/x-www-form-urlencoded; charset=UTF-8");

httpUrlConnection.connect();