Open URL using Groovy receives status 403

Question

I am trying to read the contents of a web page using a Groovy script. The page contains the readings from one of my temperature sensors that I want to save regularly. I have tried the simplest variant:

def url = "https://measurements.mobile-alerts.eu/Home/MeasurementDetails?deviceid=021B5594EAB5&vendorid=60122a8b-b343-49cb-918b-ad2cdd6dff16&appbundle=eu.mobile_alerts.mobilealerts&fromepoch=1674432000&toepoch=1674518400&from=23.01.2023%2000:00&to=24.01.2023%2000:00&command=refresh"
def res = url.toURL().getText()
println( res)

The result is:

Caught: java.io.IOException: Server returned HTTP response code: 403 for URL: (my url)

In any browser, this URL works without problems. I would be very grateful for any tips on how to solve this problem.

Answer 1

HTTP code 403 means that a client is forbidden from accessing a valid URL. In other words, the server knows that you are not making a request via a web browser. To bypass this restriction, you need to specify a User-Agent in the request header.

For example:

def url = 'https://measurements.mobile-alerts.eu/Home/MeasurementDetails?deviceid=021B5594EAB5&vendorid=60122a8b-b343-49cb-918b-ad2cdd6dff16&appbundle=eu.mobile_alerts.mobilealerts&fromepoch=1674432000&toepoch=1674518400&from=23.01.2023%2000:00&to=24.01.2023%2000:00&command=refresh'
def res = url.toURL().getText(requestProperties:
        ['User-Agent': 'Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; Win64; x64; rv:47.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/47.0'])
println res

You can switch to other valid user-agent values.