Https connection in java

Question

I have successfully generated a keystore using

keytool -genkeypair -alias SomeAlias -keyalg RSA -validity 365 -keystore NAME.keystore -storetype JKS

placed it in tomcat config dir and updated server.xml file enabling 8443 port listening.

So i can access https://localhost:8443/MyApp

But when i am trying to POST some data from https://localhost:8443/MyApp to https://localhost:8443/MyApp

sun.security.validator.ValidatorException: PKIX path building failed: sun.security.provider.certpath.SunCertPathBuilderException: unable to find valid certification path to requested target

my POST function:

    public void HttpsPostData(String data, URL url){
    try {
        String encodedData = URLEncoder.encode("data", "UTF-8") + "=" + URLEncoder.encode(data, "UTF-8");
        HttpsURLConnection con = (HttpsURLConnection)url.openConnection();

        con.setDoOutput(true);
        OutputStreamWriter wr = new OutputStreamWriter(con.getOutputStream());
        wr.write(encodedData);
        wr.flush();

        BufferedReader in = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(con.getInputStream()));

        String inputLine;

        while ((inputLine = in.readLine()) != null)
        {
            System.out.println(inputLine); 
        }

        in.close();
    } catch (IOException ex) {
        Logger.getLogger(Sender.class.getName()).log(Level.SEVERE, null, ex);
    }
}

what i am missing?

Answer 1

You will have to trust the server certificate, even if it was localhost. Probably the easiest way is to use a Java application called InstallCert. See a blog post here.

Quick steps:

1. Compile the InstallCert.java with javac InstallCert.java.
2. Call java InstallCert localhost:8443, trust the certificate and InstallCert will produce a file called jssecacerts.
3. Copy jssecacerts to your JDK directory under the jre/lib/security directory.

and the program should be able to trust the certificate.