URL.openConnection returning different instance of HttpsURLConnection in different environments

Question

I am trying to make an Https request in java with the below code snippet:

1. java.net.URL urlObject = new java.net.URL("/*my https url*/");
2. javax.net.ssl.HttpsURLConnection HttpsURLConnection = (javax.net.ssl.HttpsURLConnection)urlObject.openConnection();

At runtime in line2 the urlObject.openConnection() returns an instance of sun.net.www.protocol.https.DelegateHttpsURLConnection which is typecasted to javax.net.ssl.HttpsURLConnection and this works perfectly fine.

However, in one of the environment this does not work and gives the below exception:

java.lang.ClassCastException: com.sun.net.ssl.internal.www.protocol.https.HttpsURLConnectionOldImpl cannot be cast to javax.net.ssl.HttpsURLConnection

Here in line 2 urlObject.openConnection() returns an instance of com.sun.net.ssl.internal.www.protocol.https.HttpsURLConnectionOldImpl which cannot be typecasted to javax.net.ssl.HttpsURLConnection.

Can someone help me understand why urlObject.openConnection() returns different instances of different classes in different environments. Is it something to do with the dependencies etc.

Additional Infos:

• I have read other stackoverflow answers regarding this. My objective here is to understand the underlying reason why this is happening which was not conveyed enough in other answers.
• One workarond I found was to use com.sun.net.ssl.HttpsURLConnection con = (com.sun.net.ssl.HttpsURLConnection) urlObj.openConnection(); in place of line 2. But com.sun.net.ssl.HttpsURLConnection is actually deprecated.
• Another similar workaround was to use Http instead of Https i.e use java.net.HttpURLConnection = (java.net.HttpURLConnection) urlObject.openConnection();...but then this is does not answer my question about why the problem is actually happening.
• I am using openJdk 8

Answer 1

Is there any particular reason you are trying to cast it to javax.net.ssl.HttpsURLConnection? You can use the base class, URLConnection and perform operations.