Httpurlconnection Worked Fine in Android 2.X But Not in 4.1: No Authentication Challenges Found

HttpURLConnection worked fine in Android 2.x but NOT in 4.1: No authentication challenges found

I am currently facing the same problem. On 4.1 Jelly Bean I receive an IOException "No authentication challenges found" when calling getResponseCode() on the HttpURLConnection.

I have searched online to see what has changed in the Android source code and found the following:
4.0.4 (working): https://bitbucket.org/seandroid/libcore/src/7ecbe081ec95/luni/src/main/java/libcore/net/http/HttpURLConnectionImpl.java
4.1.1 (not working): https://bitbucket.org/seandroid/libcore/src/6b27266a2856/luni/src/main/java/libcore/net/http/HttpURLConnectionImpl.java

As one can see in 4.1 JB the method getAuthorizationCredentials() throws the IOException. It parses the challenge headers it finds in the response using HeaderParser.parseChallenges(..), if the response code is 401 or 407. If the returned List is empty the Exception is thrown.

https://bitbucket.org/seandroid/libcore/src/6b27266a2856/luni/src/main/java/libcore/net/http/HeaderParser.java

We are currently investigating what exactly causes that List to be empty, but have the suspicion that our server might use realm=... instead of realm="..." in the challenge header. Missing quotation marks might be the cause for this problem. We have to investigate further if that is indeed the case and if we can make it work.

android - no authentication challenges found Error with Get request

I think the problem perhaps is setDoOutput(), I have tested this sample code, you can read my comments

private class APIRequest extends AsyncTask<Void, Void, String> {
    @Override
    protected String doInBackground(Void... params) {
        try {            
            String token = "0123456789";            
            URL url = new URL("https://validate.co.nz/api/public/api/authenticate");                
            HttpsURLConnection urlConnection = (HttpsURLConnection) url.openConnection();
            urlConnection.setDoInput(true);         
            urlConnection.setDoOutput(true); //HERE: if TRUE, receive "No authentication challenges found"; if FALSE, receive "token_not_provided"              
            urlConnection.setRequestMethod("GET"); // I think if GET, should setDoOutput(false);
            urlConnection.setRequestProperty("Authorization", "Basic " + token);
            urlConnection.connect();
            InputStream inputStream;
            if (urlConnection.getResponseCode() != HttpURLConnection.HTTP_OK) {
                inputStream = urlConnection.getErrorStream();
            } else {
                inputStream = urlConnection.getInputStream();
            }                
            return String.valueOf(urlConnection.getResponseCode()) + " " + urlConnection.getResponseMessage();
        } catch (Exception e) {
            return e.toString();
        }
    }

    @Override
    protected void onPostExecute(String response) {
        super.onPostExecute(response);            
    }
}

HTTP Basic Authentication issue on Android Jelly Bean 4.1 using HttpURLConnection

We were able to solve Jelly Bean not calling getPasswordAuthentication() of the Authenticator via the following new method:

@TargetApi(Build.VERSION_CODES.FROYO) 
private void setJellyBeanAuth(HttpURLConnection httpConn) {
    if (Build.VERSION.SDK_INT >= Build.VERSION_CODES.JELLY_BEAN) {
        byte[] auth = (USER + ":" + PASSWORD).getBytes();
        String basic = Base64.encodeToString(auth, Base64.NO_WRAP);
        httpConn.setRequestProperty("Authorization", "Basic " + basic);
    }
}

Then just call this function after opening the connection:

httpURLConn = (HttpURLConnection) url.openConnection();
setJellyBeanAuth(httpURLConn);

The @TargetApi for Froyo annotation is only necessary since we are still supporting API 7 while Base64 was added in API 8

FileNotFoundException for HttpURLConnection in Ice Cream Sandwich

Try removing the setDoOutput call. Taken from this blog:
a blog

Edit: This is needed when using a POST call.

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