Apache HTTP Client - Ignore SSL Problems

Sometimes, especially when testing, it can be useful to make Apache HTTP Client ignore the SSL problems.
SSL problems may include ignoring of certificate trust (issuers) and host verification. The following snippet creates an Apache HttpClient with SingleClientConnManager that will ignore the SSL problems:

import javax.net.ssl.SSLContext;
import javax.net.ssl.TrustManager;
import javax.net.ssl.X509TrustManager;
import org.apache.http.conn.params.ConnRoutePNames;
import org.apache.http.conn.scheme.PlainSocketFactory;
import org.apache.http.conn.scheme.Scheme;
import org.apache.http.conn.scheme.SchemeRegistry;
import org.apache.http.conn.ssl.SSLSocketFactory;

public HttpClient createHttpClient() {
  TrustManager[] trustAllCerts = new TrustManager[] { new X509TrustManager() {

    @Override
    public java.security.cert.X509Certificate[] getAcceptedIssuers() {
     return null;
    }

    @Override
    public void checkClientTrusted(java.security.cert.X509Certificate[] certs, String authType) {
    }

    @Override
    public void checkServerTrusted(java.security.cert.X509Certificate[] certs, String authType) {
    }
  } };
  SSLContext context = SSLContext.getInstance("TLS");
  context.init(null, trustAllCerts, null);

  SSLSocketFactory sf = new SSLSocketFactory(context, SSLSocketFactory.ALLOW_ALL_HOSTNAME_VERIFIER);

  SchemeRegistry schemeRegistry = new SchemeRegistry();
  schemeRegistry.register(new Scheme("http", 80, PlainSocketFactory.getSocketFactory()));
  schemeRegistry.register(new Scheme("https", 443, sf));

  SingleClientConnManager cm = new SingleClientConnManager(schemeRegistry);

  return new DefaultHttpClient(cm);
}

Pay Attention! In production you must use a valid SSL! Use this code for testing purposes only!

Integration Testing of RESTful Application

In the previous posts I have described how to start Jetty from code in the beginning of the unit tests and how to initialize the in-memory HSQL database once Jetty is started.

If you have completed the steps from these posts, you should have a running application in the beginning of your tests. And now you are ready to start the actual testing of the application.

I believe that the best way to test RESTful API is to issue actual HTTP requests and since we have a Jetty server running, it becomes possible.

There are a lot of HTTP Clients available in Java. The examples below use Apache HTTP Client.
But as always first let's add a maven dependency:

<dependency>
         <groupId>org.apache.httpcomponents</groupId>
         <artifactId>httpclient</artifactId>
         <scope>test</scope>
        </dependency>

Now some convenient static methods that can be used:

import org.apache.http.HttpResponse;
import org.apache.http.client.HttpClient;
import org.apache.http.client.methods.HttpDelete;
import org.apache.http.client.methods.HttpGet;
import org.apache.http.client.methods.HttpPost;
import org.apache.http.client.methods.HttpPut;
import org.apache.http.entity.ByteArrayEntity;
import org.apache.http.impl.client.DefaultHttpClient;
import org.apache.http.message.AbstractHttpMessage;
import org.apache.http.message.BasicHeader;
...
   static HttpResponse executeGet(String url) throws IOException {
        HttpClient httpclient = new DefaultHttpClient();
        HttpGet get = new HttpGet(url);
        return httpclient.execute(get);
    }

    static HttpResponse executeDelete(String url) throws IOException {
        HttpClient httpclient = new DefaultHttpClient();
        HttpDelete delete = new HttpDelete(url);
        return httpclient.execute(delete);
    }

    static HttpResponse executePost(String url, byte[] body) throws IOException {
        HttpClient httpclient = new DefaultHttpClient();
        HttpPost post = new HttpPost(url);
        post.setEntity(new ByteArrayEntity(body));
        return httpclient.execute(post);
    }

    static HttpResponse executePut(String url, byte[] body) throws IOException {
        HttpClient httpclient = new DefaultHttpClient();
        HttpPut put = new HttpPut(url);
        put.setEntity(new ByteArrayEntity(body));
        return httpclient.execute(put);
    }

So your test can be something like:

@Test
    public void testGet() throws Exception {
        HttpResponse response = executeGet(url, null, null, null);
        assertEquals(response.getStatusLine().getStatusCode(), 200);
    }

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Recommended Reading

1. Next Generation Java Testing: TestNG and Advanced Concepts
2. Apache Maven 3 Cookbook
3. Spring Recipes: A Problem-Solution Approach