Need Help getting SSL to work with HttpsURLConnections

[John Kammer <ka...@bit-sys.com>]

Forgive me, I'm new at this...

I am using: Java v 1.4.2_02-b03
          : Tomcat v 4.1.29

I�m having trouble getting an HttpsURLConnection to work as expected. I suspect I am missing something (possibly a great many things) and would appreciate any insight anyone could provide. I've not been able to find a single source that addresses this problem although I've found bits and pieces in several places. 

I have a simple servlet running in Tomcat that does nothing more than report back that it is alive. Posting to it at http://myserver:8080/simpleServlet/simpleServlet returns a response of:

      <simpleServletResponse>I am alive!</simpleServletResponse>. 

Additionally I have a simple client app that calls the servlet with a POST. The client can run on either the same machine as the server or a different machine. 

1.	Using an HttpURLConnection in the client app works fine. I can call the servlet on either port 8080 (http) or 8443 (https).  This works from either machine.

2.	If I do nothing other than change the HttpURLConnection to an HttpsURLConnection then everything falls apart immediately and I don�t understand why (I do believe I have the proper imports included and it all compiles fine). From everything I can tell I should be able to replace the one with the other. 

3.	Keystores & certificates:  I have generated certificates for both machines using keytool and have imported the client machine certificate into the trustedcerts file on the server machine. I have NOT had any of these certificates signed by a certificate authority (and due to complexities I won�t go into here that isn�t likely to happen).  Do the certificates need to be signed by a CA in order for HttpsURLConnection to work?

4.	The result of calling the method url.openConnection() is that �null� is printed to the screen then program execution simply stops. No Exception seems to be thrown � everything just stops� Why? 

HttpsURLConnection conn = (HttpsURLConnection) myurl.openConnection();

Ultimately I would like to get Client-Certification working but haven�t been able to find a good guide out there for doing so. At the moment I am taking small steps in the hope of gaining a better understanding. Any help would be greatly appreciated. 

Thanks in advance !
-- John Kammer

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