Making HTTPS call from inside the WebSphere Application Server

In the Getting markup from HTTPS connection in Java program entry i talked about how to make a HTTPS call from standalone Java program, but what if you want to make a HTTPS call from a Servlet, or some code that is running inside J2EE container such as WebSphere Application server, In that case you will have to import the SSL certificate inside WAS.

I wanted to figure out the steps to make HTTPS call from inside WAS so i did create a DemoSSL servlet that takes URL that you want to access as input and makes request to that URL, once the request is successful it will write the response back to the output. Then i configured WAS so that i can make call to https://mail.atech.com, my employers email server but you can use some other https url if you want.

First i did create a DemoSSLServlet that looks like this



package com.webspherenotes.ssl;

import java.io.BufferedReader;
import java.io.IOException;
import java.io.InputStream;
import java.io.InputStreamReader;
import java.net.HttpURLConnection;
import java.net.URL;

import javax.servlet.ServletException;
import javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet;
import javax.servlet.http.HttpServletRequest;
import javax.servlet.http.HttpServletResponse;

/**
 * Servlet implementation class DemoSSLServlet
 */
public class DemoSSLServlet extends HttpServlet {

    protected void doGet(HttpServletRequest request, HttpServletResponse response) throws ServletException, IOException {
        // TODO Auto-generated method stub
    }

    /**
     * @see HttpServlet#doPost(HttpServletRequest request, HttpServletResponse response)
     */
    protected void doPost(HttpServletRequest request, HttpServletResponse response) throws ServletException, IOException {
        System.out.println("Entering DemoSSLServlet.doPost()");
        String submitUrl = request.getParameter("url");
        System.out.println("Value of URL " + submitUrl);
        URL url = new URL(submitUrl);
        
        // Open the URL: throws exception if not found
        HttpURLConnection conn = 
         (HttpURLConnection)url.openConnection();
        conn.connect();
        InputStream inputStream = conn.getInputStream();
        BufferedReader reader = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(inputStream));
        String line = null;
        while((line = reader.readLine()) != null){
            response.getWriter().println(line);
        }        
        System.out.println("Exiting DemoSSLServlet.doPost()");
    }

}


In the DemoSSLServlet servlet, i did override the doPost() method and in this method i am making call to the supplied URL and printing response to the output. also had to create index.jsp to take URL as input from user


<%@ page language="java" contentType="text/html; %>
<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; 
charset=ISO-8859-1">
<title>Insert title here</title>
</head>
<body>
  <form action="DemoSSLServlet" method="post">
    <table>
      <tr>
        <td>URL</td>
        <td><input type="text" name="url" /></td>
        <td><input type="Submit" name="submit" /></td>
      </tr>
    </table>
  </form>
</body>
</html>


Then i did install the DemoSSL.war file on my WAS server, i tried testing it with http://www.google.com and made sure that it works and it is able to return markup, But when i tried accessing the https://mail.atech.com URL i got following error



So next step was to configure the WAS trust store so that it would trust SSL certificate from https://mail.atech.com. Login into the WAS Admin console and go to Security -< SSL Certificate and Key Management page like this



Click on Key Stores and Certificates



Click on CellDefaultTrustStore




Click on Signer Certificates



Click on Retrieve from Port button to get a screen like this,



On this page enter the information related to the Host from which you want to import the SSL certificate



Click on Retrieve signer certificate button, at this point WAS will import the SSL certificate from host and display it like this





Now save the changes and when you try to hit the URL again it should work without throwing exception

3 comments:

  1. ManojSeptember 10, 2015 at 5:21 AM

    Useful. Thanks!!

    ReplyDelete
  2. AbhiJune 25, 2019 at 10:07 PM

    Thanks for info
    Web Design Company in Bangalore
    Website development in Bangalore

    ReplyDelete
  3. UnknownOctober 4, 2021 at 4:16 AM

    Hello!

    Thanks for the post.

    Could you please help me with one question ?

    If I need to use specific certificate in my https request - what should I do?
    For example when I send message using JMQ I set my SSL configuration in QCF and in this SSL configuration I have a link to the SSL key Store and to the certificate which QCF should use.
    Is there a solution for https request ?

    ReplyDelete