[prasadw 96/06/26]

import java.net.*;
import java.io.*;

class T {
    public static void main(String argv[]) {
        String host = "haven";
        int port = 8888;
        String protocol = "http";
        try {
            URL url = new URL(protocol, host, port, "/servlet/rulesadmin");
            URLConnection urlcon = url.openConnection();
            int length = urlcon.getContentLength();
            System.out.println("getAction: length " + length);
            InputStream is = urlcon.getInputStream();
            byte[] b = new byte[length];
            is.read(b);
            String str = new String(b, 0);
            System.out.println(str);
        } catch (Exception e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        }
    }
}


prints

getAction: length -1
java.lang.NegativeArraySizeException
at T.main(T.java:16)


even though the server returns valid content length.

3954$ telnet haven 8888
Trying 129.144.175.60...
Connected to haven.
Escape character is '^]'.
GET /servlet/rulesadmin HTTP/1.0

HTTP/1.0 200 OK
Server: Jeeves
Content-Length: 1154
Date: 27 Jun 1996 05:17:26 GMT

# rules properties
# Name translation rules for files, cgi and servlets.
#
# The two possible formats are:
#
# For file translations
# Rn.virtualPath=/x/y
....


[prasadw 96/06/26]

If we call getContentType before getContentLength, things work fine:

import java.net.*;
import java.io.*;

class T {
    public static void main(String argv[]) {
        String host = argv[0];
        int port = Integer.parseInt(argv[1]);
        String protocol = "http";
        String file = argv[2];
        try {
            URL url = new URL(protocol, host, port, file);
            URLConnection urlcon = url.openConnection();
            System.out.println(urlcon.getContentType());
            System.out.println(urlcon.getContentLength());
        } catch (Exception e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        }
    }
}

returns

4047$ java T haven 8888 /
text/html
474