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    lt       response setHeader  quot Cache-Control quot    quot no-cache quot        response setHeader  quot Cache-Control quot    quot no-store quot        response setDateHeader  quot Expires quot   0       response setHeader  quot Pragma quot    quot no-cache quot      gt     lt head gt   lt meta http-equiv  quot X-UA-Compatible quot  content  quot IE edge quot  gt   lt meta name  quot viewport quot  content  quot width device-width  minimum-scale 1 0  maximum-scale 1 0 quot  gt   lt meta name  quot viewport quot  content  quot width device-width  initial-scale 1 quot  gt   I am also using the following in a few pages  which basically is same as above   lt meta charset  quot utf-8 quot  gt   lt meta http-equiv  quot X-UA-Compatible quot  content  quot IE edge quot  gt   lt meta name  quot viewport quot  content  quot width device-width  initial-scale 1 quot  gt   lt meta http-equiv  quot Expires quot  content  quot -1 quot    gt   lt meta http-equiv  quot Cache-Control quot  content  quot private quot    gt   lt meta http-equiv  quot Cache-Control quot  content  quot no-store quot    gt   lt meta http-equiv  quot Pragma quot  content  quot no-cache quot    gt   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

User · Answer

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/

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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

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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

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

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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

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

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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   lt Connector protocol  quot org apache coyote http11 Http11Protocol quot             port  quot 8443 quot  maxThreads  quot 200 quot  scheme  quot https quot             secure  quot true quot  SSLEnabled  quot true quot             keystoreFile  quot  usr share tomcat keystore quot             keystorePass  quot my-password quot             clientAuth  quot false quot  sslProtocol  quot TLS quot             URIEncoding  quot UTF-8 quot             compression  quot force quot             compressableMimeType  quot text html text xml text plain text javascript text css quot   gt   So the full server configuration for the application looked liked this in the Tomcat server configuration file   opt tomcat conf server xml    lt Service name  quot my-application quot  gt     lt Connector protocol  quot org apache coyote http11 Http11Protocol quot               port  quot 8443 quot  maxThreads  quot 200 quot  scheme  quot https quot               secure  quot true quot  SSLEnabled  quot true quot               keystoreFile  quot  usr share tomcat keystore quot               keystorePass  quot my-password quot               clientAuth  quot false quot  sslProtocol  quot TLS quot               URIEncoding  quot UTF-8 quot               compression  quot force quot               compressableMimeType  quot text html text xml text plain text javascript text css quot   gt      lt Connector port  quot 8009 quot  protocol  quot HTTP 1 1 quot               connectionTimeout  quot 20000 quot               redirectPort  quot 8443 quot    gt      lt Engine name  quot my-application quot  defaultHost  quot localhost quot  gt        lt Realm className  quot org apache catalina realm LockOutRealm quot  gt           lt Realm className  quot org apache catalina realm UserDatabaseRealm quot               resourceName  quot UserDatabase quot   gt       lt  Realm gt        lt Host name  quot localhost quot   appBase  quot webapps quot            unpackWARs  quot true quot  autoDeploy  quot true quot  gt            lt Valve className  quot org apache catalina valves AccessLogValve quot  directory  quot logs quot               prefix  quot localhost access log quot  suffix  quot  txt quot               pattern  quot  h  l  u  t  amp quot  r amp quot   s  b quot    gt        lt  Host gt     lt  Engine gt   lt  Service gt   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

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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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 helps

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

[tomcat8] Tomcat: java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: Invalid character found in method name. HTTP method names must be tokens

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