HTTP digest authentication with HttpUrlConnection

Question

I am trying to connect to the Tomcat Web Server on my machine using a digest authentication. I am using the memory realm of tomcat. Here is how the server is configured:

1) In server.xml:

<Realm className="org.apache.catalina.realm.MemoryRealm" digest="MD5" />

2) In tomcat-users.xml

<user username="testuser" password="81dc9bdb52d04dc20036dbd8313ed055" roles="test"/>

3) In web.xml of my web project:

<auth-method>DIGEST</auth-method>

As you can see I have specified as a digest method "MD5" and I have encryped the password using the digest.sh of Tomcat.

Here is my code on the client side:

private static void testGet() throws IOException {

    // Create a URL
    URL test = new URL("http://localhost:8080/TestWebProject/TestServlet");

    // Open a connection to the URL
    HttpURLConnection conn = (HttpURLConnection) test.openConnection();

    MessageDigest md5 = null;
    try {
      md5 = MessageDigest.getInstance("MD5");
    } catch(NoSuchAlgorithmException e) {
      e.printStackTrace();
    }

    // Digest password using the MD5 algorithm
    String password = "1234";
    md5.update(password.getBytes());
    String digestedPass = digest2HexString(md5.digest());

    // Set header "Authorization"
    String credentials = "testuser:" + digestedPass;
    conn.setRequestProperty("Authorization", "Digest " + credentials);

    // Print status code and message
    System.out.println("Test HTTP GET method:");
    System.out.println("Status code: " + conn.getResponseCode());
    System.out.println("Message: " + conn.getResponseMessage());
    System.out.println();

}

private static String digest2HexString(byte[] digest)
{
   String digestString="";
   int low, hi ;

   for(int i=0; i < digest.length; i++)
   {
      low =  ( digest[i] & 0x0f ) ;
      hi  =  ( (digest[i] & 0xf0)>>4 ) ;
      digestString += Integer.toHexString(hi);
      digestString += Integer.toHexString(low);
   }
   return digestString ;
}

I think that my client side code is ok and the configuration of the server, too. Though the server keeps sending me the status code 401 with message "Unauthorized". As I am not an experienced java developer, I want to ask if anyone has idea or sees an error in my implementation.

Thank you in advance!

Answer 1

Digest authentication is far more complex than just sending username:password (that is actually Basic authentication... and the username:password tuple needs to be Base64 encoded!).

You can read all about digest here.

If you're not required to use HttpUrlConnection take a look at these two projects:

• Async Http Client (more mature)
• Hotpotato (mine)

Both of them already support Digest (and other useful stuff) out of the box.

Answer 2

HttpUrlConnection is OK for simple jobs, but if you want something with more advanced features (like digest authentication), I'd recommend Commons HTTP Client.

Answer 3

I am able to get it done working following code, please let me know if i am missing something;

        DefaultHttpClient httpclient = new DefaultHttpClient();

        ResponseHandler<String> responseHandler = new BasicResponseHandler();

        httpclient.getCredentialsProvider().setCredentials(
                new AuthScope("localhost", 8080), 
                new UsernamePasswordCredentials("username", "password"));   

        HttpGet httpget = new HttpGet(urlStr);
         System.out.println("executing request" + httpget.getRequestLine());

        String response = httpclient.execute(httpget, responseHandler);
        System.out.println("Response :: " + response);