HttpURLConnection Invalid HTTP method: PATCH

Question

When I try to use a non-standard HTTP Method like PATCH with URLConnection:

    HttpURLConnection conn = (HttpURLConnection) new URL("http://example.com").openConnection();
    conn.setRequestMethod("PATCH");

I get an exception:

java.net.ProtocolException: Invalid HTTP method: PATCH
at java.net.HttpURLConnection.setRequestMethod(HttpURLConnection.java:440)

Using a higher level API like Jersey generates the same error. Is there a workaround to issue a PATCH HTTP request?

Answer 1

There are a lot of good answers, so here is mine (not work in jdk12):

import java.io.IOException;
import java.lang.reflect.Field;
import java.lang.reflect.Modifier;
import java.net.HttpURLConnection;
import java.net.URL;
import java.util.Arrays;
import java.util.LinkedHashSet;
import java.util.Set;

public class SupportPatch {
    public static void main(String... args) throws IOException {
        allowMethods("PATCH");

        HttpURLConnection conn = (HttpURLConnection) new URL("http://example.com").openConnection();
        conn.setRequestMethod("PATCH");
    }

    private static void allowMethods(String... methods) {
        try {
            Field methodsField = HttpURLConnection.class.getDeclaredField("methods");

            Field modifiersField = Field.class.getDeclaredField("modifiers");
            modifiersField.setAccessible(true);
            modifiersField.setInt(methodsField, methodsField.getModifiers() & ~Modifier.FINAL);

            methodsField.setAccessible(true);

            String[] oldMethods = (String[]) methodsField.get(null);
            Set<String> methodsSet = new LinkedHashSet<>(Arrays.asList(oldMethods));
            methodsSet.addAll(Arrays.asList(methods));
            String[] newMethods = methodsSet.toArray(new String[0]);

            methodsField.set(null/*static field*/, newMethods);
        } catch (NoSuchFieldException | IllegalAccessException e) {
            throw new IllegalStateException(e);
        }
    }
}

It also uses reflection, but instead of hacking into every connection object we're hacking HttpURLConnection#methods static field which is used in the checks internally.