Authenticating a single request with httpclient 4.x

Question

I have an HttpClient instance that's shared by a number of threads. I would like to use it to make a single authenticated request. Because only the single request should be authenticated, I don't want to modify the HttpClient instance as described in the documentation. Here's what I've worked out instead, which isn't working. From what I can tell, it doesn't look like the CredentialsProvider is being used at all. Any tips?

HttpContext context = null;
if(feedSpec.isAuthenticated()) {
  context = new BasicHttpContext();
  CredentialsProvider credsProvider = new BasicCredentialsProvider();
  credsProvider.setCredentials(AuthScope.ANY, new UsernamePasswordCredentials(feedSpec.getHttpUsername(), feedSpec.getHttpPassword()));
  context.setAttribute(ClientContext.CREDS_PROVIDER, credsProvider);
  context.setAttribute(ClientPNames.HANDLE_AUTHENTICATION, true);
}
HttpGet httpGet = new HttpGet(feedSpec.getUri());
HttpResponse httpResponse = httpClient.execute(httpGet, context);

Answer 1

I do it in this way with commons-httpclient-2.0.2:

HttpClient client = new HttpClient();
PostMethod pm = new PostMethod("http://...");
pm.addRequestHeader("AUTHORIZATION", "Basic bXl1c2VyOm15cGFzcw==");
int code = client.executeMethod(pm);

The user and password are Base64 encoded. I used myuser:mypass

Answer 2

It turns out the server I was connecting to was only offering NTLM authentication. I implemented NTLM authentication using the guide here. I modified the code listed in my question to look like so and it works:

HttpContext context = null;
if(feedSpec.isAuthenticated()) {
    context = new BasicHttpContext();
    CredentialsProvider credsProvider = new BasicCredentialsProvider();
    credsProvider.setCredentials(AuthScope.ANY, new NTCredentials(feedSpec.getHttpUsername(), feedSpec.getHttpPassword(), "", ""));
    context.setAttribute(ClientContext.CREDS_PROVIDER, credsProvider);
}
HttpGet httpGet = new HttpGet(feedSpec.getUri());
HttpResponse httpResponse = httpClient.execute(httpGet, context);