IOException when downloading file that is secured with username and password in Java

Question

Issue:

I want to download a file that is laying on our school servers at a given interval. The .xml file I want to access lays behind a login, but you can, at least in a browser, access the file without using a login by modifying the URL:

https://username:[email protected]/xmlFile.xml

But Java throws an IOException if I want to access the page. Other files like this W3 example work without any problems.

My current code used for downloading files looks like this:

DocumentBuilderFactory dbf = DocumentBuilderFactory.newInstance();
DocumentBuilder docBuilder = dbf.newDocumentBuilder();

URL webServer = new URL(url);
//url is the specified address I want to access.
InputStream stream = webServer.openStream();
Document xmlDatei = docBuilder.parse(stream);

return xmlDatei

Question:

Are there special arguments or functions that I can use to prevent this from happening?

Answer 1

Try to use Basic Authentication to access your file.

        String webPage = "http://www.myserver.com/myfile.xml";
        String name = "username";
        String password = "password";

        String authString = name + ":" + password;
        byte[] authEncBytes = Base64.encodeBase64(authString.getBytes());
        String authStringEnc = new String(authEncBytes);

        URL url = new URL(webPage);
        URLConnection urlConnection = url.openConnection();
        urlConnection.setRequestProperty("Authorization", "Basic " + authStringEnc);

        try (InputStream stream = urlConnection.getInputStream()) {

            // preparation steps to use docBuilder ....

            Document xmlDatei = docBuilder.parse(stream);

        }