Java: Display request of an HttpURLConnection before sending

java request httpurlconnection
Hirnhamster picture Hirnhamster · Aug 7, 2010 · Viewed 21.5k times · Source

I want to make some API calls to a server using HttpURLConnection. But the requests are not successful, returning:

<error>
  <http_status>400 Bad Request</http_status>
  <message>Unexpected request Content-Type header ''. Expecting 'application/x-www-form-urlencoded'.</message>
</error>

So I want to check what the "real" content is that is being sent to the server. By real content I mean the exact HTTP request.

Any ideas how I can see this?

Edit: Based on the first answers here I should clarify my problem: I want to avoid using an external program like HTTP sniffer or anything and I was hoping that there is a function or a property or whatever that holds the information I am looking for.

If that is not the case, does someone know if this information can be manually rebuilt (for example by calling several functions like getRequestMethod(), etc.)

I am facing this problem kinda often so that it's worth the effort to build such functionality myself. Just need to know how :)

Answer

RealHowTo picture RealHowTo · Aug 7, 2010

You can put the HttpURLConnection in debug mode by enabling java.logging with 

-Djava.util.logging.config.file=logging.properties

and put in logging.properties (by default in JRE_HOME\lib) the following property

sun.net.www.protocol.http.HttpURLConnection.level = ALL

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