Is there a way to establish an HTTPS connection with Java 1.3?

Question

I need to work with the old 1.3 JVM, and I am asked to create a secure connection to another server. Unfortunately, HttpsURLConnection appears only in JVM 1.4.

Is there any other way to create a secure connection? Is there a library that I could add to this function for you?

Answer 1

You need to install the Java Secure Socket Extension (JSSE), which was required because Sun did not send it from the JDK due to comedy export restrictions. I looked at the Sun website, but the JDK 1.3 instructions haunt the elusive. Keep in mind that JDK 1.3 now ends with Sun, so they may not have any information.

http://hc.apache.org/httpclient-3.x/sslguide.html

Answer 2

Check out the BouncyCastle . It works all the way to Java 1.1 and J2ME.

Answer 3

If JSSE doesn't work for you (it may be hard to find documentation from @skaffman's answer), you might want to take a look at some kind of proxy. You can configure a daemon running on the same local computer (or trusted network), which then forwards requests via HTTPS to the endpoint. You can write this proxy using a more modern JVM. Then your legacy system points to a proxy server, not a real service.

Of course, if, by chance, you also have control over the endpoint, you could just put both servers in a VPN.

Answer 4

You might be able to use JSSE .

Answer 5

skaffman links to the SSL manual for jakarta commons HttpClient . HttpClient is a good library for working with http.