IllegalArgumentException when trying to connect to HTTPs based site.

[Susan Smith]

I'm trying to connect to a HTTPs based site using JAVA program with username and password provided to me but it gives me the following error.

java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: Illegal character(s) in message header value: Basic dH
JhZmZpY2Nhc3Q6Z3YxS0xCOEtxVHJhQTRnWDMxelRzVmlCNE9Kc0hsaXhNMDNteHQ5ZTZKQm40
WmI4MHNXZ0FKdHFpcFBqUWlu
        at sun.net.www.protocol.http.HttpURLConnection.checkMessageHeader(HttpURLConnectio
n.java:301)
        at sun.net.www.protocol.http.HttpURLConnection.setAuthenticationProperty(HttpURLCo
nnection.java:1962)
        at sun.net.www.protocol.http.BasicAuthentication.setHeaders(BasicAuthentication.ja
va:143)
        at sun.net.www.protocol.http.HttpURLConnection.getServerAuthentication(HttpURLConn
ection.java:1574)
        at sun.net.www.protocol.http.HttpURLConnection.getInputStream(HttpURLConnection.ja
va:1014)
        at sun.net.www.protocol.https.HttpsURLConnectionImpl.getInputStream(HttpsURLConnec
tionImpl.java:234)

I have this below before I open the connection to data source

Authenticator.setDefault(new MyAuthenticator());

and this is my 'Authenticator' class.

/****************************************************************************
*Custom Authenticator class to access the XML pages.
***************************************************************************/
   public class MyAuthenticator extends Authenticator 
{
        // This method is called when a password-protected URL is accessed
        protected PasswordAuthentication getPasswordAuthentication() {
            // Get information about the request
            String promptString = getRequestingPrompt();
            String hostname     = getRequestingHost();
            InetAddress ipaddr  = getRequestingSite();
            int port            = getRequestingPort();
    
            // Return the information
    return new PasswordAuthentication(HTTP_USER, HTTP_PASS.toCharArray());
     }
} // end class MyAuthenticator

Could someone please advice what might be the cause of this?
Thanks in advance for all the help.

[Joseph Macer]

That's hard to say for sure "yup, you need another String there" because you don't have access to the server-side implementation. Since you said the username/password were provided to you, I'm guessing your code simply doesn't match what the server expects, OR you're getting a return value your code isn't designed to handle.

From the Java API, that exception is "Thrown to indicate that a method has been passed an illegal or inappropriate argument. "

If this is someone else's server, I would definitely contact them first to ask how authentication works.