Tomcat: java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: Invalid character found in method name. HTTP method names must be tokens

Question

I am getting below stack trace when I am deploying my application in a multi-server Apache Tomcat 8 environment. I am getting this error frequently, and it seems it is blocking the tomcat thread:

INFO [http-nio-80-exec-4461] org.apache.coyote.http11.AbstractHttp11Processor.process Error parsing HTTP request header
 Note: further occurrences of HTTP header parsing errors will be logged at DEBUG level.
 java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: Invalid character found in method name. HTTP method names must be tokens
 at org.apache.coyote.http11.AbstractNioInputBuffer.parseRequestLine(AbstractNioInputBuffer.java:233)
 at org.apache.coyote.http11.AbstractHttp11Processor.process(AbstractHttp11Processor.java:1017)
 at org.apache.coyote.AbstractProtocol$AbstractConnectionHandler.process(AbstractProtocol.java:684)
 at org.apache.tomcat.util.net.NioEndpoint$SocketProcessor.doRun(NioEndpoint.java:1524)
 at org.apache.tomcat.util.net.NioEndpoint$SocketProcessor.run(NioEndpoint.java:1480)
 at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor.runWorker(Unknown Source)
 at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.run(Unknown Source)
 at org.apache.tomcat.util.threads.TaskThread$WrappingRunnable.run(TaskThread.java:61)
 at java.lang.Thread.run(Unknown Source)

Can any one direct me how to troubleshoot or narrow down such an exeption? I am not getting any reference to any of my application source files. I tried to google around, and in of the links it said, you are trying to access http url through https, which seems unlikely. I am not getting this error, when the application runs on a single Tomcat 8 instance. I get this only in a multi-server environment.

I am also sharing the meta tags I have embedded on each page, if that helps to identify the cause.

<%
    response.setHeader("Cache-Control", "no-cache");
    response.setHeader("Cache-Control", "no-store");
    response.setDateHeader("Expires", 0);
    response.setHeader("Pragma", "no-cache");
%>


<head>
<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=edge">
<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, minimum-scale=1.0, maximum-scale=1.0">
<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1">

I am also using the following in a few pages, which basically is same as above:

<meta charset="utf-8">
<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=edge">
<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1">
<meta http-equiv="Expires" content="-1" />
<meta http-equiv="Cache-Control" content="private" />
<meta http-equiv="Cache-Control" content="no-store" />
<meta http-equiv="Pragma" content="no-cache" />

Even if anyone helps in giving a direction to my troubleshooting attempt, that will be useful, as currently I have no idea where to look into.

score 468 · Answer 1 · edited Aug 06 '19 at 14:47

468

This exception can occur when you try to execute HTTPS request from client on endpoint which isn't HTTPS enabled. Client will encrypt request data when server is expecting raw data.

edited Aug 06 '19 at 14:47

naXa stands with Ukraine

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answered Feb 18 '17 at 18:48

Petar Tonev

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I'm not sure I understand this answer. I have a Spring Boot 1.5.1 app and I saw this exception in my log. My app only answers for SSL on port 8443 (redirected from port 443) and only has the one connector for SSL. Are you saying that someone could try http: instead of https: on port 443? – Jim Archer Mar 14 '17 at 16:00
6

Such an exceptions happen when there is a mismatch between what the server expects and what it gets. What you said is one of the possible scenarios. Maybe there is an endpoint in your server that does not run on https, but someone tries to access it this way? – Petar Tonev Mar 15 '17 at 16:15
2

Hi Peter... The issue ended up being that someone created an IP Tables rule to forward port 80 to port 8443, so anyone who hit the site using http on port 80 caused that error. We added a Tomcat connector to redirect port 8080 to 8443 and set up IP Tables rule to forward port 80 to port 8080 and the problem is all but gone. Thank for for your reply! – Jim Archer Mar 15 '17 at 17:37
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@PeterTonev: Any idea how to (redirect https to http || disable https || catch the error to at least show a meaningful error message)? – crusy May 12 '17 at 07:04
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@crusy Something that may help you here for the exception handling is [link](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/23580509/how-to-write-a-proper-global-error-handler-with-spring-mvc-spring-boot) – Petar Tonev May 22 '17 at 10:33
just stumbled over this and the problem was exactly as @PeterTonev described, thanks! changing to http solved the problem, just an oversight. – Gregor Jan 29 '18 at 16:37
This answer does not provide a solution to the problem, it only points it out. – FARS Sep 15 '22 at 17:11

Priyantha · Answer 2 · 2022-04-07T10:32:48.420

126

I got the same exception when I locally tested. The problem was a URL schema in my request.

Change https to http in your client URL.

Probably it will helps.

edited Apr 07 '22 at 10:32

answered Mar 22 '18 at 06:21

Priyantha

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Sure it works, but do note that the communication over HTTP is not secure. – Paramvir Singh Karwal Dec 16 '18 at 10:37

Shivan Sawant · Answer 3 · 2018-08-01T05:05:56.480

28

You are calling local server with http://localhost:8080/foo/bar. Call it with https://localhost:8080/foo/bar. This solves the problem

edited Aug 01 '18 at 05:05

answered Jul 25 '18 at 16:48

Shivan Sawant

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Probably you won't have https:// on 8080. Change the call to **https://** localhost:8443/foo/bar - Here is the example [link](https://dzone.com/articles/setting-ssl-tomcat-5-minutes) – Rodrigo R. Coelho – Rodrigo R. Coelho Jan 25 '20 at 00:52
1

Exactly the opposite - must change **https** to **http** – Václav Jul 04 '23 at 14:56

score 26 · Answer 4 · answered Jan 18 '20 at 18:59

26

In case someone is using swagger:

Change the Scheme to HTTP or HTTPS, depend on needs, prior to hit the execute.

Postman:

Change the URL Path to http:// or https:// in the url address

answered Jan 18 '20 at 18:59

Cyber

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In my case https://localhost:8080/index https : with(s) was not working and http://localhost:8080/index (http without s) was working , I have no idea why this was happening ? Do we have to enable SSL manually to run at https ? – Badri Paudel Oct 13 '20 at 11:14

mibollma · Answer 5 · 2020-02-02T13:57:28.207

12

I received this exception unrelated to any TLS issues. In my case the Content-Length header value did not match the body length.

edited Feb 02 '20 at 13:57

answered May 20 '19 at 09:46

mibollma

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I can't thank you enough. Every other POST request was failing with error 400, and I was ready to rip my hair out. Turned out that not sending `content-length` header solves this issue. – Alexander Woodblock Jul 09 '19 at 15:43
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I was getting a delay of 30-90sec for Postman requests to local dev - turns out, it was this issue! Disabling the `Content-Length` header fixed the delay. – Alok Jan 09 '20 at 20:22

score 5 · Answer 6 · answered Jan 09 '20 at 15:44

5

I know this is an old thread, but there is a particular case when this may happen:

If you are using AWS api gateway coupled with a VPC link, and if the Network Load Balancer has proxy protocol v2 enabled, a 400 Bad Request will happen as well.

Took me the whole afternoon to figure it out, so if it may help someone I'd be glad :)

answered Jan 09 '20 at 15:44

Daniel

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Thanks, Daniel. Can you explain what you did to resolve the 400? – Woodchuck Nov 08 '22 at 21:10
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I just disable proxy protocol v2 in the LB configuration – Daniel Nov 09 '22 at 07:47

score 3 · Answer 7 · answered May 31 '20 at 11:28

3

In my case I had to clear browser history/cookies to get rid of this error.

answered May 31 '20 at 11:28

rustylepord

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score 3 · Answer 8 · answered Oct 14 '20 at 09:18

I had this issue when working on a Java Project in Debian 10 with Tomcat as the application server.

The issue was that the application already had https defined as it's default protocol while I was using http to call the application in the browser. So when I try running the application I get this error in my log file:

INFO [http-nio-80-exec-4461] org.apache.coyote.http11.AbstractHttp11Processor.process Error parsing HTTP request header

Note: further occurrences of HTTP header parsing errors will be logged at DEBUG level.

java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: Invalid character found in method name. HTTP method names must be tokens

I however tried using the https protocol in the browser but it didn't connect throwing the error:

Here's how I solved it:

You need a certificate to setup the https protocol for the application. You can obtain certificates from Let's Encrypt. For me the easiest route was creating a obtaining a self-signed certificate. .

I first had to create a keystore file for the application, more like a self-signed certificate for the https protocol:

sudo keytool -genkey -keyalg RSA -alias tomcat -keystore /usr/share/tomcat.keystore

Note: You need to have Java installed on the server to be able to do this. Java can be installed using sudo apt install default-jdk.

Next, I added a https Tomcat server connector for the application in the Tomcat server configuration file (/opt/tomcat/conf/server.xml):

sudo nano /opt/tomcat/conf/server.xml

Add the following to the configuration of the application. Notice that the keystore file location and password are specified. Also a port for the https protocol is defined, which is different from the port for the http protocol:

<Connector protocol="org.apache.coyote.http11.Http11Protocol"
           port="8443" maxThreads="200" scheme="https"
           secure="true" SSLEnabled="true"
           keystoreFile="/usr/share/tomcat.keystore"
           keystorePass="my-password"
           clientAuth="false" sslProtocol="TLS"
           URIEncoding="UTF-8"
           compression="force"
           compressableMimeType="text/html,text/xml,text/plain,text/javascript,text/css"/>

So the full server configuration for the application looked liked this in the Tomcat server configuration file (/opt/tomcat/conf/server.xml):

<Service name="my-application">
  <Connector protocol="org.apache.coyote.http11.Http11Protocol"
             port="8443" maxThreads="200" scheme="https"
             secure="true" SSLEnabled="true"
             keystoreFile="/usr/share/tomcat.keystore"
             keystorePass="my-password"
             clientAuth="false" sslProtocol="TLS"
             URIEncoding="UTF-8"
             compression="force"
             compressableMimeType="text/html,text/xml,text/plain,text/javascript,text/css"/>

  <Connector port="8009" protocol="HTTP/1.1"
             connectionTimeout="20000"
             redirectPort="8443" />

  <Engine name="my-application" defaultHost="localhost">
     <Realm className="org.apache.catalina.realm.LockOutRealm">
        <Realm className="org.apache.catalina.realm.UserDatabaseRealm"
             resourceName="UserDatabase"/>
    </Realm>

    <Host name="localhost"  appBase="webapps"
          unpackWARs="true" autoDeploy="true">

        <Valve className="org.apache.catalina.valves.AccessLogValve" directory="logs"
             prefix="localhost_access_log" suffix=".txt"
             pattern="%h %l %u %t &quot;%r&quot; %s %b" />

    </Host>
  </Engine>
</Service>

This time when I tried accessing the application from the browser using:

https://my-server-ip-address:https-port

In my case it was:

https:35.123.45.6:8443

it worked fine. Although, I had to accept a warning which added a security exception for the website since the certificate used is a self-signed one.

That's all.

I hope this helps

score 3 · Answer 9 · answered Jun 12 '23 at 06:26

3

I solved this problem by replacing https to http

answered Jun 12 '23 at 06:26

Arman

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score 2 · Answer 10 · answered Sep 06 '19 at 15:46

I got this error resolved by doing 2 things in chrome browser:

Pressed Ctrl + Shift + Delete and cleared all browsing data from beginning.
Go to Chrome's : Settings ->Advanced Settings -> Open proxy settings -> Internet Properties then Go to the Content window and click on the Clear SSL State Button.

This site has this information and other options as well : https://www.thesslstore.com/blog/fix-err-ssl-protocol-error/

smilyface · Answer 11 · 2019-01-09T10:16:57.520

Answering this old question (for others which may help)

Configuring your httpd conf correctly will make the problem solved. Install any httpd server, if you don't have one.

Listing my config here.

[smilyface@box002 ~]$ cat /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf | grep shirts | grep -v "#"

        ProxyPass /shirts-service http://local.box002.com:16743/shirts-service
        ProxyPassReverse /shirts-service http://local.box002.com:16743/shirts-service
        ProxyPass /shirts http://local.box002.com:16443/shirts
        ProxyPassReverse /shirts http://local.box002.com:16443/shirts
        ...
        ...
        ...

edit the file as above and then restart httpd as below

[smilyface@box002 ~]$ sudo service httpd restart

And then request with with https will work without exception.
Also request with http will forward to https ! No worries.

score 0 · Answer 12 · edited Jul 03 '18 at 00:56

I was getting the same exception, whenever a page was getting loaded,

NFO: Error parsing HTTP request header
 Note: further occurrences of HTTP header parsing errors will be logged at DEBUG level.
java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: Invalid character found in method name. HTTP method names must be tokens
    at org.apache.coyote.http11.InternalInputBuffer.parseRequestLine(InternalInputBuffer.java:139)
    at org.apache.coyote.http11.AbstractHttp11Processor.process(AbstractHttp11Processor.java:1028)
    at org.apache.coyote.AbstractProtocol$AbstractConnectionHandler.process(AbstractProtocol.java:637)
    at org.apache.tomcat.util.net.JIoEndpoint$SocketProcessor.run(JIoEndpoint.java:316)
    at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor.runWorker(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:1149)
    at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.run(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:624)
    at org.apache.tomcat.util.threads.TaskThread$WrappingRunnable.run(TaskThread.java:61)
    at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:748)

I found that one of my page URL was https instead of http, when I changed the same, error was gone.

score 0 · Answer 13 · answered Oct 07 '18 at 17:36

This usually happens when you are using a URI scheme that is not supported by the server in which the app is deployed. So, you might either want to check what all schemes your server supports and modify your request URI accordingly, or, you might want to add the support for that scheme in your server. The scope of your application should help you decide on this.

score 0 · Answer 14 · answered Jan 14 '19 at 14:04

0

It happened to me when I had a same port used in ssh tunnel SOCKS to run Proxy in 8080 port and my server and my firefox browser proxy was set to that port and got this issue.

answered Jan 14 '19 at 14:04

privatejava

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score 0 · Answer 15 · answered Nov 18 '20 at 07:29

0

You can also try turning off the SSL option in settings, in case you are sending it through POSTMAN

answered Nov 18 '20 at 07:29

Guru

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score 0 · Answer 16 · answered Sep 20 '22 at 06:08

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I solved this problem by simply turning off my vpn.

answered Sep 20 '22 at 06:08

Linyun Liu

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score 0 · Answer 17 · answered May 27 '23 at 22:25

I was having this problem when I call any get/post Method in my api of webservices in spring. The problem is: parameter was not encoded. Use the java.net.URLEncoder to encode any parameter in your request: i.e. For the parameter called "id" I'm encoding the "idParameter" variable that I'll send in the request:

     String paramsForURL = "?id=" + URLEncoder.encode(idParameter, "UTF-8")

Tomcat: java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: Invalid character found in method name. HTTP method names must be tokens

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