HttpClient unable to 302 this link?

Question

I found a URL that httpclient doesn't seem to be handling redirects on:

http://news.google.com/news/url?sa=t&fd=R&usg=AFQjCNGrJk-F7Dmshmtze2yhifxRsv8sRg&url=http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1647243/20100907/story.jhtml

should 302 to: http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1647243/20100907/story.jhtml

when I look at the headers in the browser everything looks good:

HTTP/1.1 302 Moved Temporarily
Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8
Location: http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1647243/20100907/story.jhtml
Content-Length: 258
Date: Wed, 08 Sep 2010 18:40:21 GMT
Expires: Wed, 08 Sep 2010 18:40:21 GMT
Cache-Control: private, max-age=0
X-Content-Type-Options: nosniff
X-Frame-Options: SAMEORIGIN
X-Xss-Protection: 1; mode=block
Server: GSE
Set-Cookie: PREF=ID=024209255b405b06:TM=1283971221:LM=1283971221:S=AG-13_7Cjg_EqlRY; expires=Fri, 07-Sep-2012 18:40:21 GMT; path=/; domain=.google.com
Connection: close

However httpclient doesn't seem to give me the final URL. Here is the code I was using

HttpHead httpget = null;
HttpHost target = null;
HttpUriRequest req = null;

String startURL = "http://news.google.com/news/url?sa=t&fd=R&usg=AFQjCNGrJk-F7Dmshmtze2yhifxRsv8sRg&url=http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1647243/20100907/story.jhtml";
HttpContext localContext = new BasicHttpContext();
localContext.setAttribute(ClientContext.COOKIE_STORE,HttpClientFetcher.emptyCookieStore);
httpget = new HttpHead(startURL);

HttpResponse response = httpClient.execute(httpget, localContext);

Header[] test = response.getAllHeaders();
for(Header h: test) {
logger.info(h.getName()+ ": "+h.getValue());
}

target = (HttpHost) localContext.getAttribute( ExecutionContext.HTTP_TARGET_HOST );

req = (HttpUriRequest) localContext.getAttribute( ExecutionContext.HTTP_REQUEST );

// STILL PRINTS OUT THE GOOGLE NEWS LINK
finalURL = target+""+req.getURI();

Am I doing something wrong? thanks

Answer 1

Found the answer from the httpclient mailing list...

Google doesn't treat a HEAD and GET the same, so the GET redirects with 302 and the HEAD request gives a 200 OK