Can I override the Host header where using java's HttpUrlConnection class?

Question

I'm using the following code to open a http connection in java:

 URL url = new URL("http://stackoverflow.com");
 HttpURLConnection conn = (HttpURLConnection) url.openConnection();
 conn.setDoOutput(true);
 conn.setRequestMethod("GET");
 conn.setRequestProperty("Host", "Test:8080");
 conn.getOutputStream();

However calling conn.setRequestProperty("Host", "Test:8080") appears to have no effect regardless of what order I call the methods and the Host is reset to the destination server. Is there any way to override the Host header without using a different library?

TIA Matt

Answer 1

This used to work in the past, but it has been disabled as part of a security-fix. Apparently without a note in the changelog. There are even bugs like #7022056 for this at bugs.sun.com.

There is a similar question for another header, where the answer goes more into the details, so I just link it instead of writing it myself. :-)

The only workarounds seem to be setting sun.net.http.allowRestrictedHeaders to true or use another http-library like the already mentioned http components.