create a custom user agent for java - possible?

[ifx]

Hi,

I'm developing a wbe crawler in Java and have got a reasonable way, with the exception of setting the user agent. Currently it seems to be "Java1.3.0". Here's a snippet of code I'm using if it's any help:

URLConnection urlConnection = url.openConnection();
System.out.println("Downloading " + url.toString());

urlConnection.setAllowUserInteraction(false);

InputStream urlStream = url.openStream();

Is there any way of setting the user agent?

Thanks in advance if you can help with this!

 

[palbano]

Set the USER-AGENT HTTP header. That's all there is to it.
see:
[blue]
URLConnection.setRequestProperty()
[/blue]

-pete

 

[ifx]

Thanks for your help (sorry for not getting back sooner). It all compiles and runs but doesn't seem to have any impac on the user agent. Is there something I've overlooked? The UA is still Java1.3.0. Below is a of code where the url is opened, is there anything I've missed?:

public String getpage(URL url)

{ try {
// try opening the URL
URLConnection urlConnection = url.openConnection();
urlConnection.setRequestProperty("User-Agent","MyAgent"
urlConnection.setAllowUserInteraction(false);

System.out.println("Downloading " + url.toString());
InputStream urlStream = url.openStream();
...

}

Thanks a lot for your time!

 

[ifx]

Just in case anyone is curious, I did some digging and found that while setRequestProperty() is a valid method, it doesn't actually do anything! It was created but never fully implemented. Even in 1.4 it doesn't seem to work. Oh well...!