Why do I get "Error parsing HTTP request header" when POSTing a JSON string?

Question

I am trying to send a POST request from browser to my server(local host). My request URL is :

 http://localhost:8080/myPath/myServlet?requestData={  .......//Json String......};

requestData is a json String (I am using GSON for the purpose.) Everything is working fine until the data in the json string exceeds a particular limit. Say, I am sending array of objects in the json string. If the number of objects in the list exceed 67 then I get following error :

 AM org.apache.coyote.http11.AbstractHttp11Processor process
 INFO: Error parsing HTTP request header
 Note: further occurrences of HTTP header parsing errors will be logged at DEBUG level.

Why is this so? I am totally confused. Why does this happen and what needs to be done to fix this? I want to understand the reason behind this, for I don't understand that after particular number of objects it suddenly stops working and I get this error in my console.

It seems that you are passing the json string as a `GET` parameter, not `POST`. — damgad, Oct 22 '14 at 09:29
possible duplicate of [What is the maximum length of a URL in different browsers?](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/417142/what-is-the-maximum-length-of-a-url-in-different-browsers) — Whymarrh, Oct 22 '14 at 09:30
I agree that this might be a duplicate question , Is there any solution ? — user3686864, Oct 22 '14 at 09:53
You'll get this error message if you are exceeding url length in get requests aswell — JonnyRaa, Dec 16 '14 at 15:09
Have a look at this post: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/18819180/tomcat-7-0-43-info-error-parsing-http-request-header — Etienne Tonnelier, Dec 29 '16 at 09:46

score 5 · Answer 1 · answered Jun 18 '15 at 09:07

5

I had a similar issue, I was sending a POST request (using RESTClient plugin for Firefox) with data in the request body and was receiving the same message.

In my case this happened because I was trying to use HTTPS protocol in a local tomcat instance where HTTPS was not configured.

answered Jun 18 '15 at 09:07

nkatsar

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I'm setting up a new tomcat server, and I've somehow configured port 8443 as HTTP (not HTTPS) (not realizing that I did this), so normal requests such as (https://localhost:8443) which normally go to the Manager GUI (on a new instance failed with this error). I was missing the `SSLEnabled="true"` property on the `` element. Basically the browser is negotiating an SSL/HTTPS connection and the server is only talking HTTP. – PatS Mar 14 '23 at 17:01

score 4 · Answer 2 · answered Oct 22 '14 at 09:29

4

It seems that you are using POST incorrectly. Although you are using POST you are sending JSON as a request parameter that is the GET style. When using POST you should send content as a request body. In this case no reasonable size limitation exist.

answered Oct 22 '14 at 09:29

AlexR

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Please take a look on this tutorial: http://www.mkyong.com/java/how-to-send-http-request-getpost-in-java/ – AlexR Oct 22 '14 at 09:31
How can I send it from the browser? – user3686864 Oct 22 '14 at 09:38
1

You can write HTML page with `form` tag, define its `method=POST` and configure `action` to your URL, create text area field, then write your JSON there and press button `submit`. – AlexR Oct 22 '14 at 09:41

score 2 · Answer 3 · edited Aug 06 '18 at 06:52

I apologize for not answering questions seriously before.

1.Maybe it caused by special characters.You can get details from this url。https://bz.apache.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=60594

solve it by：

encodeURIComponent(JSON.stringify(data))

or change your tomcat version to 7.0.67 or lower. According to developers's opinion, tomcat developers in the following versions set the option to allow |，{，}. Get detail http://tomcat.apache.org/tomcat-8.0-doc/config/systemprops.html#Other

The new environment variable will be included in: - trunk for 9.0.0.M18 onwards

8.5.x for 8.5.12 onwards
8.0.x for 8.0.42 onwards
7.0.x for 7.0.76 onwards2.

Another reason maybe that Request header is too large.You can solve this by modifying the server.xml.

<Connector port="8080" maxHttpHeaderSize="8192" maxThreads="150" 
    minSpareThreads="25" maxSpareThreads="75" enableLookups="false"
    redirectPort="8443" acceptCount="100" connectionTimeout="20000" 
    disableUploadTimeout="true" />

Hope it works for you！

Try adding example while answering the question to make it more helpful for the person asking. — Muhammad Omer Aslam, Nov 13 '17 at 06:06

score 1 · Answer 4 · answered Mar 14 '17 at 11:53

1

In my case problem was caused by security issues, i used csfr for authentication, and all my post forms should have input with _csrf

<input type="hidden" name="${_csrf.parameterName}" value="${_csrf.token}"/>

answered Mar 14 '17 at 11:53

Daria

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Rudy Vissers · Answer 5 · 2017-11-06T16:05:20.997

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IMHO the problem of parsing the headers can be caused by numerous reasons.

In my case it was due to the fact that the following XML was passed:

<soapenv:Header/>

The empty header element was generated by SoapUI. After the removal of the <soapenv:Header/> from the XML of the WS then everything was fine.

edited Nov 06 '17 at 16:05

answered Oct 05 '17 at 17:40

Rudy Vissers

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score 0 · Answer 6 · answered Sep 07 '18 at 06:03

0

I fixed this by passing an additional header

connection: close, along with the request.

Could you please try and let me know if this works for you.

answered Sep 07 '18 at 06:03

Manish Singh

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Why do I get "Error parsing HTTP request header" when POSTing a JSON string?

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