Question

I want my Java program to use the system’s proxy configuration. Accordingly, I used the code found in many places, such as this answer, to set java.net.useSystemProxies to true and call ProxySelector.getDefault().select(...) to discover the proxy for the particular host I want to reach. This works fine when I’ve configured a single explicit proxy server in Internet Properties. But if I have set “Use automatic configuration script”, it always returns the DIRECT “proxy”.

I know that the script works, as my browser can access the hosts for which it returns a proxy server, and without the script set, it can’t. I even tried simplifying the script to its barest essentials:

function FindProxyForURL(url, host)
{
    return "PROXY my.proxy.mydomain:3128";
}

and it works in my browser, but ProxySelector.getDefault().select(...) still returns only DIRECT.

Am I missing something? (This is on Java 1.6 & Windows 7, should it matter.)

Answer 1

No, the Java ProxySelector does not read Proxy Auto-Config (PAC) files.

However, as suggested by Brian de Alwis as an answer to my similar question, the Proxy Vole library appears to provide that support/capability.

To provide network connectivity out of the box for you Java
application you can use the Proxy – Vole library. It provides some
strategies for autodetecting the current proxy settings. There are
many configureable strategies to choose from. At the moment Proxy –
Vole supports the following proxy detection strategies.

• Read platform settings (Supports: Windows, KDE, Gnome, OSX)
• Read browser setting (Supports: Firefox 3.x, Internet Explorer; Chrome and Webkit use the platform settings)
• Read environment variables (often used variables on Linux / Unix server systems)
• Autodetection script by using WPAD/PAC (Not all variations supported)