Avoiding the "javax.net.ssl.SSLHandshakeException: sun.security.validator.ValidatorException: PKIX path building failed" error

Hey folks,

today I'm gonna share one solution for a problem related to https hand-shake.

The SSLHandshakeException is thrown by java when the host you are trying to contact doesn't have a valid SSL certificate for that hostname.
For example, when I wanted to connect to the site which certificate details look like  "This CA Root certificate is not trusted because it is not in the Trusted Root Certification Authorities store." 

So when we are making a request to that site using java URLConnection it gives us an exception look like "javax.net.ssl.SSLHandshakeException: sun.security.validator.ValidatorException: PKIX path building failed" . Then I did research for this problem and found a solution as follows:

package com.blogspot.vmustafayev4en.ca;

import javax.net.ssl.*;
import java.io.BufferedReader;
import java.io.InputStreamReader;
import java.io.OutputStreamWriter;
import java.net.MalformedURLException;
import java.net.URL;
import java.net.URLConnection;

public class TestHttps {
    public static void main(String args[]) throws Exception {

        // Create a trust manager that does not validate certificate chains
        TrustManager[] trustAllCerts = new TrustManager[]{
                new X509TrustManager() {
                    public java.security.cert.X509Certificate[] getAcceptedIssuers() {
                        return null;
                    }

                    public void checkClientTrusted(
                            java.security.cert.X509Certificate[] certs, String authType) {
                    }

                    public void checkServerTrusted(
                            java.security.cert.X509Certificate[] certs, String authType) {
                    }
                }
        };

        // Install the all-trusting trust manager
        try {
            SSLContext sc = SSLContext.getInstance("SSL");
            sc.init(null, trustAllCerts, new java.security.SecureRandom());
            HttpsURLConnection.setDefaultSSLSocketFactory(sc.getSocketFactory());
        } catch (Exception e) {
            System.out.println("Error" + e);
        }

        // Now you can access URL(https) without having the certificate in the truststore
        try {

            HostnameVerifier hv = new HostnameVerifier() {
                public boolean verify(String urlHostName, SSLSession session) {
                    System.out.println("Warning: URL Host: " + urlHostName + " vs. "
                            + session.getPeerHost());
                    return true;
                }
            };

            String datam = "param=myparam";
            URL url = new URL("https://myurlgoeshere/blabla.aspx");
            URLConnection conn = url.openConnection();
            HttpsURLConnection urlConn = (HttpsURLConnection) conn;
            urlConn.setHostnameVerifier(hv);
            conn.setDoOutput(true);
            OutputStreamWriter wr = new OutputStreamWriter(conn.getOutputStream());
            wr.write(datam);
            wr.flush();

            BufferedReader in = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(conn.getInputStream()));

            StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
            String inputLine;
            while ((inputLine = in.readLine()) != null) {
                sb.append(inputLine);
            }
            in.close();
            String res = sb.toString();
            System.out.println(res);

        } catch (MalformedURLException e) {
            System.out.println("Error in SLL Connetion" + e);
        }


    }
}

That is all what you need to prevent that exception. We use VPN connection so don't need Certificate :)

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Hope it was useful. Thanks for reading!