RESTFUL jetty service returning 403 error java

Question

I am facing this HTTP 403 Forbidden response from a https REST service when I am trying to call it from my java code. Can you kindly let me know if I am missing something here?

Please note that the server returns the expected data when I trigger the request from any browser / SOAPUI/ Chrome Postman clients. 2 peer certificates are used - as shown in the ssl info from soapui after the request is sent.

The code snippet is attached. [The headers I set in the code are taken from the request header I found from the successful requests]

HttpsURLConnection connection = (HttpsURLConnection)new URL("https://server address").openConnection();
connection.setRequestProperty("Authorization", "Basic " + authStringEnc);
connection.setRequestProperty("Content-Type", "application/json");
connection.setRequestProperty("Accept", "text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,*/*;q=0.8");
connection.setRequestProperty("Accept-Encoding","gzip, deflate, br");
connection.setRequestProperty("User-Agent", "Apache-HttpClient/4.1.1");
connection.addRequestProperty("Connection", "Keep-Alive");
connection.addRequestProperty("Cache-Control","no-cache");
connection.setRequestMethod("GET");
connection.connect();

System.out.println("Response Code : " + connection.getResponseCode()+" "+connection.getResponseMessage());

Response Code : 403 Forbidden

Answer 1

Can you please check the Server URL if it is in the Java Acceptable format?
Sometimes java need escape characters to recognize strings correctly. This question: What are all the escape characters? , can help you to check if you are using any of those characters. Also check if the conversion in the function is done properly.
Also, if you have more complex URL, consider to use java.net.URL .
Finally, check the user agent parameter Setting user agent of a java URLConnection .

Answer 2

Thanks for your response. The issue is with session cookie to be used for the connection. We are able to connect and get the response back with response code HTTP 200 once the cookie with JSESSIONID is passed as a header. Thanks again.