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Why should I use Base64 related algorithm before sending the http request

I'm doing something about sending http REST request to Teamcity server.
For the authentication part, when I use code below, I will get the 401 error.
public class Client {
public static void main(String args[]){
try{
Client client = new Client();
client.sendGet();
//client.sendPost();
}catch(Exception e){
e.printStackTrace();
}
}
String USER_AGENT = "";
private void sendGet() throws Exception {
String url = "http://localhost:80/httpAuth/app/rest/builds";
URL obj = new URL(url);
HttpURLConnection con = (HttpURLConnection) obj.openConnection();
con.setRequestMethod("GET");
con.setRequestProperty("User-Agent", USER_AGENT);
String login = "gearon";
String password = "gearonpassword";
String token = login + ":" + password;
con.setRequestProperty ("Authorization", "Basic " + token);
int responseCode = con.getResponseCode();
System.out.println("\nSending 'GET' request to URL : " + url);
System.out.println("Response Code : " + responseCode);
BufferedReader in = new BufferedReader(
new InputStreamReader(con.getInputStream()));
String inputLine;
StringBuffer response = new StringBuffer();
while ((inputLine = in.readLine()) != null) {
response.append(inputLine);
}
in.close();
System.out.println(response.toString());
}
}
I solve the problem by adding below code
byte[] tokenArr = StringUtils.getBytesUtf8(token);
String encoded = new String(Base64.encodeBase64(tokenArr));
con.setRequestProperty ("Authorization", "Basic " + token);
However, I can't figure out why this solved my problem. There is no any special character in my username or password. And, I have set my project encoding to UTF-8 in Eclipse by Right click the project --> Properties --> Resources --> Text file encoding --> UTF-8.
The javadoc of getBytesUtf8 method is
Encodes the given string into a sequence of bytes using the UTF-8
charset, storing the result into a new byte array.
If my project is using UTF-8 already, this method should add no value.
For another method encodeBase64, the javadoc is:
Encodes binary data using the base64 algorithm but does not chunk the
output.
Maybe there is where amazing happens. I read something about Base64 in wiki
I can't make myself clear about this issue. So could anybody tell me what happened behind.

This is defined in RFC 7617:
To receive authorization, the client
obtains the user-id and password from the user,
constructs the user-pass by concatenating the user-id, a single
colon (":") character, and the password,
encodes the user-pass into an octet sequence (see below for a
discussion of character encoding schemes),
and obtains the basic-credentials by encoding this octet sequence
using Base64 ([RFC4648], Section 4) into a sequence of US-ASCII
characters ([RFC0020]).

MailChimp Integration in Java

I want to integrate MailChimp API in my java project. When I call Rest call using HttpURLConnection class, it responds with 401 code.
Here is my code:
URL url = new URL("https://us13.api.mailchimp.com/3.0/lists");
HttpURLConnection conn = (HttpURLConnection) url.openConnection();
conn.setDoOutput(true);
conn.setRequestMethod("POST");
conn.setRequestProperty("Content-Type", "application/json");
conn.setRequestProperty("Authorization", "apikey <my-key>");
String input = "<json data>";
OutputStream os = conn.getOutputStream();
//os.write(input.getBytes());
os.flush();
if (conn.getResponseCode() != HttpURLConnection.HTTP_CREATED) {
throw new RuntimeException("Failed : HTTP error code : " + conn.getResponseCode());
}
BufferedReader br = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader((conn.getInputStream())));
String output;
System.out.println("Output from Server .... \n");
while ((output = br.readLine()) != null) {
System.out.println(output);
}
conn.disconnect();

I will suggest using Apache Commons Codec package for encoding.
It support various formats such as Base64 and Hexadecimal.
Earlier I was also facing the same issue. I am sharing the code that I used in my application for authenticating to Mailchimp API v-3.0
//basic imports
import org.apache.commons.codec.binary.Base64;
.
.
.
//URL to access and Mailchimp API key
String url = "https://us9.api.mailchimp.com/3.0/lists/";
//mailchimp API key
String apikey = xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
// Authentication PART
String name = "Anything over here!";
String password = apikey; //Mailchimp API key
String authString = name + ":" + password;
byte[] authEncBytes = Base64.encodeBase64(authString.getBytes());
String authStringEnc = new String(authEncBytes);
URL urlConnector = new URL(url);
HttpURLConnection httpConnection = (HttpURLConnection) urlConnector.openConnection();
httpConnection.setRequestMethod("GET");
httpConnection.setDoOutput(true);
httpConnection.setDoInput(true);
httpConnection.setRequestProperty("Content-Type", "application/json; charset=UTF-8");
httpConnection.setRequestProperty("Accept", "application/json");
httpConnection.setRequestProperty("Authorization", "Basic " + authStringEnc);
InputStream is1 = httpConnection.getInputStream();
StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
BufferedReader br = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(is1, "utf-8"));
String line = null;
while ((line = br.readLine()) != null) {
sb.append(line + "\n");
}
br.close();
Now you can use StringBuilder Object sb to parse the output as required
Hope it resolves your issue :)

HTTP 401 response code means "not authorized".
You didn't set or pass your credentials properly. Is the certificate from the client set up? Here's an example of an HTTPS client.

HTTP 401 simply means you're not Authorized to send this request.
you can set username any string (the MailChimp docs suggest using anystring as a username) and your API key as a password.
In case of Postman request, you can set under the Authorization tab choose Basic Auth to set username and password. Below image shows the same.
More info about Adding/ Getting Members to/ from a Mailing List on MailChimp API 3.0, I find this article very useful.

Http POST in android app without data

I'm trying to send a video url in a http POST request but it's not working for me, I think I've (almost?) the necessary code to make it work, or else I'm missing something very simple?
public void postVideoURL() throws IOException {
String encodedUrl = URLEncoder.encode("http://video.ted.com/talks/podcast/DavidBrooks_2011.mp4", "UTF-8");
URL obj = new URL("http://10.50.0.105:8060/launch/dev?url="+encodedUrl);
HttpURLConnection con = (HttpURLConnection) obj.openConnection();
//add request header
con.setRequestMethod("POST");
// Send post request
con.setDoOutput(true);
OutputStreamWriter wr = new OutputStreamWriter(con.getOutputStream());
System.out.println(con.getResponseCode());
System.out.println(con.getResponseMessage());
wr.flush();
wr.close();
wr.write("");
}
Any tips to lead me to the right direction?
Here is what I'm trying to do but in C#
using System.Net;
using System.Web;
class Program
{
static void Main()
{
string rokuIp = "192.168.0.6";
string channelId = "dev";
string videoUrl = "http://video.ted.com/talks/podcast/DavidBrooks_2011.mp4";
// Note that the query string parameters should be url-encoded
string requestUrl = $"http://{rokuIp}:8060/launch/{channelId}?url={HttpUtility.UrlEncode(videoUrl)}";
using (var wc = new WebClient())
{
// POST the query string with no data
wc.UploadString(requestUrl, "");
}
}
}
The following Post command to use in terminal works, this is essentially what I want to do, but in Java:
curl -d "" "http://10.50.0.46:8060/launch/12?url=http%3A%2F%2Fvideo.ted.com%2Ftalks%2Fpodcast%2FDavidBrooks_2011.mp4"

You are never writing anything to the output stream. You have to call wr.write() to write your data to the stream.
Also, you can't encode the URL like that inside the String. You need to concatenate the two Strings together after you've encoded the url separately. Like this:
String encodedUrl = URLEncoder.encode("http://video.ted.com/talks/podcast/DavidBrooks_2011.mp4");
URL obj = new URL("http://10.50.0.105:8060/launch/dev?url="+encodedUrl);

Keywords object is empty when making authenticated YouTube API call with Java YouTubeService class

I am trying to fetch videos from MY OWN YouTube account, so that I get the keywords/tags for each video. I'm trying to use the most simple approach for making an authenticated call to get my videos with keywords/tags.
Here is my Java code:
String clientID = "XXXXXXXXXXXX.apps.googleusercontent.com";
String devKey = "MY-DEVELOPER-KEY";
String userEmail = "MY-GMAIL-EMAIL";
String userPassword = "MY-GMAIL-PASSWORD";
String authorName = "MY-YOUTUBE-ACCOUNT-NAME";
String url = "https://gdata.youtube.com/feeds/api/videos";
YouTubeService service = new YouTubeService( clientID, devKey );
service.setUserCredentials( userEmail, userPassword );
YouTubeQuery query = new YouTubeQuery( new URL( url ) );
query.setAuthor( authorName );
VideoFeed videoFeed = service.query( query, VideoFeed.class );
Please, help me understand what I am doing wrong, to authenticate and get those media keywords.
If you are going to refer me to another authentication option, please, show an example of using that other option for my specific scenario.

You're running into the behavior described in this blog post: your API calls are going against the search index, and those results will never have the keywords in them.
There's an example that shows how you could request the uploads feed in Java using v2 of the Data API; you can modify that example to use the channel name default instead of username and you'll automatically pull in the uploads feed for the currently authenticated account.

Here is what finally worked for me to get JSON-C feed with tags (keywords):
/** AUTHENITICATION **/
// HTTP connection
URL url = new URL("https://www.google.com/accounts/ClientLogin");
HttpURLConnection urlConnection = (HttpURLConnection) url.openConnection();
urlConnection.setRequestMethod("POST");
urlConnection.setDoInput(true);
urlConnection.setDoOutput(true);
urlConnection.setUseCaches(false);
urlConnection.setRequestProperty("Content-Type","application/x-www-form-urlencoded");
// Form the POST parameters
StringBuilder content = new StringBuilder();
content.append("Email=").append(URLEncoder.encode("MY-GMAIL-LOGIN", "UTF-8"));
content.append("&Passwd=").append(URLEncoder.encode("MY-GMAIL-PASSWORD", "UTF-8"));
content.append("&service=").append(URLEncoder.encode("youtube", "UTF-8"));
OutputStream outputStream = urlConnection.getOutputStream();
outputStream.write(content.toString().getBytes("UTF-8"));
outputStream.close();
// Check response status
int responseCode = urlConnection.getResponseCode();
if( responseCode != HttpURLConnection.HTTP_OK ) {
// EXCEPTION
}
// Get the token from the response
String token;
InputStream inputStream = urlConnection.getInputStream();
BufferedReader in = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(inputStream));
String line = null;
while((line = in.readLine()) != null) {
if ( line.indexOf("Auth=") > -1 ) {
token = line.split("=")[1];
}
}
/** JSON-C FEED WITH TAGS **/
HttpClient client = new HttpClient();
GetMethod method = new GetMethod("http://gdata.youtube.com/feeds/api/users/default/uploads?v=2&alt=jsonc&max-results=50&start-index=1");
// set the authentication headers
method.setRequestHeader("Authorization", "GoogleLogin auth=" + token);
method.setRequestHeader("X-GData-Key", "key=MY-DEV-KEY");
method.setRequestHeader("GData-Version", "2");
method.setRequestHeader("Content-Type", "application/json; charset=UTF-8");
// Make the call
int statusCode = client.executeMethod(method);
if ( statusCode != HttpStatus.SC_OK ) {
// EXCEPTION
}
String JSON = method.getResponseBodyAsString();

Rome XmlReader not reading https feed

I am trying to read https://d3ca01230439ce08d4aab0c61810af23:bla#mycon.mycompany.com/recordings.atom
using Rome but its giving me error
INFO: Illegal access: this web application instance has been stopped already. Could not load org.bouncycastle.jcajce.provider.symmetric.AES$ECB. The eventual following stack trace is caused by an error thrown for debugging purposes as well as to attempt to terminate the thread which caused the illegal access, and has no functional impact.
and
Server returned HTTP response code: 401 for URL: https://d3ca01230439ce08d4aab0c61810af23:bla#mycon.mycompany.com/recordings.atom .
I am doing this
URL url = new URL("https://d3ca01230439ce08d4aab0c61810af23:bla#mycon.mycompany.com/recordings.atom ");
try {
SyndFeedInput input = new SyndFeedInput();
SyndFeed feed = input.build(new XmlReader(url));
System.out.println("Feed Author:"+feed.getAuthor());
for(Object entries: feed.getEntries()){
SyndEntry entry = (SyndEntry) entries;
System.out.println("title :"+entry.getTitle());
System.out.println("description : "+entry.getDescription());
}
} catch (IllegalArgumentException | FeedException | IOException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}
Do I need to put the username password somewhere?
update
This I have done
URL url = new URL("https://d3ca01230439ce08d4aab0c61810af23:bla#mycon.mycompany.com/recordings.atom");
HttpURLConnection httpcon = (HttpURLConnection)url.openConnection();
String encoding = new sun.misc.BASE64Encoder().encode("username:pass".getBytes());
httpcon.setRequestProperty ("Authorization", "Basic " + encoding);

When I hit that URL from my browser it asks for basic authentication. You can do this with ROME:
URL feedUrl = new URL(feed)
HttpURLConnection httpcon = (HttpURLConnection)feedUrl.openConnection();
String encoding = new sun.misc.BASE64Encoder().encode("username:password".getBytes());
httpcon.setRequestProperty ("Authorization", "Basic " + encoding);
SyndFeedInput input = new SyndFeedInput();
SyndFeed feed = input.build(new XmlReader(httpcon));
You probably shouldn't use sun.misc.BASE64Encoder. Rather find another one somewhere.
From: http://cephas.net/blog/2005/02/09/retrieving-an-rss-feed-protected-by-basic-authentication-using-rome/

I find this a bit more elastic when it comes to authentication, this code works with and without authentication:
URL feedUrl = new URL("http://the.url.to/the/feed");
//URL feedUrl = new URL("http://user:pass#the.url.to/the/feed");
HttpURLConnection connection = (HttpURLConnection) feedUrl.openConnection();
if (feedUrl.getUserInfo() != null) {
String encoding = new sun.misc.BASE64Encoder().encode(feedUrl.getUserInfo().getBytes());
connection.setRequestProperty("Authorization", "Basic " + encoding);
}
SyndFeedInput input = new SyndFeedInput();
SyndFeed feed = input.build(new XmlReader(connection));

You could also use the following in place of
String encoding = new sun.misc.BASE64Encoder().encode("username:password".getBytes());
to this:
String BASIC_AUTH = "Basic " + Base64.encodeToString("username:password".getBytes(), Base64.NO_WRAP);