Making SSL calls with Grails

All of a sudden I realised that I have to call a service I have behind a SSL connection.

Using grails, this is easy to set up. Just create a couple of Groovy-classes and use it from the controller. It may be nescessary though to add the certificat of the SSL site to your JVM.

Adding the certificate

• download  the certificate you need, name it to something usefull, for example theSite.cer.
• use keytool to add it. (needs JAVA_HOME/bin in the path)
  

keytool -import -keystore /pathToJava/jre/lib/security/cacerts -file theSite.cer 

Class to make the call
this is the class to actually do the work, calling the SSL url you want to reach.
import javax.net.ssl.SSLSocketFactory import javax.net.ssl.SSLSocket import java.security.*; /** * @author theironicprogrammer@gmail.com */ class SSLConnector { String theurl String user String password public SSLConnector(url, user, pwd){ this.theurl = url this.user = user this.password = pwd } public String responseString(){ // Dynamic registration of JSSE provider java.security.Security.addProvider(new com.sun.net.ssl.internal.ssl.Provider()); // Need to be set System.setProperty("java.protocol.handler.pkgs","com.sun.net.ssl.internal.www.protocol"); // Install Authenticator Authenticator.setDefault (new SSLAuthenticator(this.user,this.password)); URL url = new URL(this.theurl); BufferedReader br = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(url.openStream())); String line; StringBuffer buff = new StringBuffer() while ((line = br.readLine()) != null){ buff.append(line) } br.close(); return buff.toString() } } Class for password authentication
this class is needed to authenticate you at the remote site.
/** * @author theironicprogrammer@gmail.com */ class SSLAuthenticator extends Authenticator{ String user String password public SSLAuthenticator(un, pw){ this.user = un this.password = pw } protected PasswordAuthentication getPasswordAuthentication() { return new PasswordAuthentication(user, password.toCharArray()); } }
In the controller you can then use the class to get a responsestring from the remote server.

// suggest to put these in config.groovy to get them from there, but not nescessary def url = "http://pathToSite/.../thePage?id=x" // or grailsApplication.config.sslConnection.url, def username = "theUsername" // or grailsApplication.config.sslConnection.username, def password = "secret" // or grailsApplication.config.sslConnection.pwd, // Create the connector def ssl = new SSLConnector(url, username, password) def responsString = ssl.responseString() // do something...
/Peter