HttpURLConnection reading response content on 403 error [duplicate]

When I fetch data from an URL with a 403 response

is = conn.getInputStream();

It throws an IOException and I can't get the response data.

But when I use firefox and access that url directly, The ResponseCode is still 403, but I can get the html content

Solution 1:

The HttpURLConnection.getErrorStream method will return an InputStream which can be used to retrieve data from error conditions (such as a 404), according to the javadocs.

Solution 2:

Usage example of HttpURLConnection :

String response = null;
try {
    URL url = new URL("http://google.com/pagedoesnotexist");
    HttpURLConnection connection = (HttpURLConnection) url.openConnection();

    // Hack to force HttpURLConnection to run the request
    // Otherwise getErrorStream always returns null
    connection.getResponseCode();
    InputStream stream = connection.getErrorStream();
    if (stream == null) {
        stream = connection.getInputStream();
    }
    // This is a try with resources, Java 7+ only
    // If you use Java 6 or less, use a finally block instead
    try (Scanner scanner = new Scanner(stream)) {
        scanner.useDelimiter("\\Z");
        response = scanner.next();
    }
} catch (MalformedURLException e) {
    // Replace this with your exception handling
    e.printStackTrace();
} catch (IOException e) {
    // Replace this with your exception handling
    e.printStackTrace();
}