Enable NTLM Authentication in Axis

By default Axis is not configured to support NTLM Authentication. To enable NTLM Authentication Axis must be configured to use the Jakarta Commons HTTPClient library. NTLM Authentication is often required to use Windows based web services.

There are a few different methods for accomplishing this, but this is probably the quickest and simplest technique:

1. Download and copy both the Jakarta Commons HTTPClient and Codec JAR files into your project and add them to the classpath.
   
   
2. Copy and paste the following method into your own class; append it to the end of your pre-existing class or create a separate utility class:
   

    public static org.apache.axis.EngineConfiguration getEngineConfiguration()
    {
     java.lang.StringBuffer sb = new java.lang.StringBuffer();
     
     sb.append("<?xml version=\"1.0\" encoding=\"UTF-8\"?>\r\n");
     sb.append("<deployment name=\"defaultClientConfig\"\r\n");
     sb.append("xmlns=\"http://xml.apache.org/axis/wsdd/\"\r\n");
     sb.append("xmlns:java=\"http://xml.apache.org/axis/wsdd/providers/java\">\r\n");
     sb.append("<globalConfiguration>\r\n");
     sb.append("<parameter name=\"disablePrettyXML\" value=\"true\"/>\r\n");
     sb.append("<parameter name=\"enableNamespacePrefixOptimization\" value=\"true\"/>\r\n");
     sb.append("</globalConfiguration>\r\n");
     sb.append("<transport name=\"http\" pivot=\"java:org.apache.axis.transport.http.CommonsHTTPSender\"/>\r\n");
     sb.append("<transport name=\"local\" pivot=\"java:org.apache.axis.transport.local.LocalSender\"/>\r\n");
     sb.append("<transport name=\"java\" pivot=\"java:org.apache.axis.transport.java.JavaSender\"/>\r\n");
     sb.append("</deployment>\r\n");
     
     return new org.apache.axis.configuration.XMLStringProvider(sb.toString());
    }

   Note: It's probably a good idea to separate the XML markup from the Java code (move XML markup to separate file). I just left the two joined together for the sake of simplicity / laziness since it eliminated one extra step from this blog posting.

3. When you create an instance of your web service locator class pass the getEngineConfiguration() method as an argument in the constructor like this:
   

   MyWebServiceStub stub = (MyWebServiceStub)new MyWebServiceLocator(getEngineConfiguration());

   
   
4. Set your user name and password like this:

   stub.setUsername("<DOMAIN>\\<USER_NAME>"); //Must use this format
   stub.setPassword("<PASSWORD>");

   
   

For more information see the following links:

• http://dev-answers.blogspot.com/2011/03/ntlm-from-axis-soap-service-client-in-3.html
• http://tjordahl.blogspot.com/2007/03/apache-axis-and-commons-httpclient.html
• http://www.nsftools.com/stubby/ApacheAxisClientTips.htm