How do I set the proxy to be used by the JVM

Question

Many times, a Java app needs to connect to the Internet. The most common example happens when it is reading an XML file and needs to download its schema.

I am behind

Answer 1

Recently I've discovered the way to allow JVM to use browser proxy settings. What you need to do is to add ${java.home}/lib/deploy.jar to your project and to init the library like the following:

import com.sun.deploy.net.proxy.DeployProxySelector;
import com.sun.deploy.services.PlatformType;
import com.sun.deploy.services.ServiceManager;

import org.apache.commons.logging.Log;
import org.apache.commons.logging.LogFactory;

public abstract class ExtendedProxyManager {

    private static final Log logger = LogFactory.getLog(ExtendedProxyManager.class);

    /**
     * After calling this method, proxy settings can be magically retrieved from default browser settings.
     */
    public static boolean init() {
        logger.debug("Init started");

        // Initialization code was taken from com.sun.deploy.ClientContainer:
        ServiceManager
                .setService(System.getProperty("os.name").toLowerCase().indexOf("windows") != -1 ? PlatformType.STANDALONE_TIGER_WIN32
                        : PlatformType.STANDALONE_TIGER_UNIX);

        try {
            // This will call ProxySelector.setDefault():
            DeployProxySelector.reset();
        } catch (Throwable throwable) {
            logger.error("Unable to initialize extended dynamic browser proxy settings support.", throwable);

            return false;
        }

        return true;
    }
}

Afterwards the proxy settings are available to Java API via java.net.ProxySelector.

The only problem with this approach is that you need to start JVM with deploy.jar in bootclasspath e.g. java -Xbootclasspath/a:"%JAVA_HOME%\jre\lib\deploy.jar" -jar my.jar. If somebody knows how to overcome this limitation, let me know.