can't get response header location using Java's URLConnection

Question

can someone kindly suggest what I'm doing wrong here?
I'm trying to get the header location for a certain URL using Java here is my code:

URLConnection conn = url.openConnection();
String location = conn.getHeaderField("Location");  

it's strange since I know for sure the URL i'm refering to return a Location header and using methods like getContentType() or getContentLength() works perfectly

Answer 1

Perhaps Location header is returned as a part of redirect response. If so, URLConnection handles redirect automatically by issuing the second request to the pointed resource, so you need to disable it:

((HttpURLConnection) conn).setInstanceFollowRedirects(false);

EDIT: If you actually need a URL of the redirect target and don't want to disable redirect handling, you may call getURL() instead (after connection is established).