Using Protégé through an authenticated proxy

I recently struggled with Protégé in order to make it work through an authenticated enterprise proxy, since I wanted to import / extend ontologies from the Web.

When running a Java application, you can pass it the URL of a proxy, but it seems the only way to setup authentication parameters is to modify original source code. I agree a plugin is certainly better, but I don't have time to invest it, so here's a simple hack to make Protégé-OWL work with such a proxy.

First, create a new directory and checkout Protégé-OWL SVN source code.

 mkdir protege-owl

cd protege-owl

svn checkout http://smi-protege.stanford.edu/repos/protege/owl/trunk  .

You'll also need to get the protege.jar file, that can be downloaded here, and move it to the /libs folder.

Edit src/edu/stanford/smi/protegex/owl/jena/parser/ProtegeOWLParser.java

Add the following import:

 import java.util.Properties;

In getInputStream method, replace

 conn.addRequestProperty("Accept", "*/*");

return conn.getInputStream();

 conn.addRequestProperty("Accept", "*/*");

// Set proxy settings only if the file is outside our domain

if(url.getHost().indexOf("company.host.tld")==-1) {

  Properties systemSettings = System.getProperties();

  systemSettings.put("http.proxyHost","proxy_URL");

  systemSettings.put("http.proxyPort", "proxy_Port");

  sun.misc.BASE64Encoder encoder = new sun.misc.BASE64Encoder();

  String encodedUserPwd = encoder.encode("proxy_User:proxy_Pass".getBytes());

  conn.setRequestProperty("Proxy-Authorization", "Basic " + encodedUserPwd);

}

return conn.getInputStream();

Edit src/edu/stanford/smi/protegex/owl/ui/metadatatab/imports/wizard/URLImportEntry.java

Add the following imports:

 import java.util.Properties;

import java.io.InputStream;

import java.net.URLConnection;

In isPossibleToImport() method, replace:

 OntologyNameExtractor extractor = new OntologyNameExtractor(url.openConnection().getInputStream(), url);

URI uri = extractor.getOntologyName();

By:

 OntologyNameExtractor extractor;

// Set proxy settings only if the file is outside our domain

if(url.getHost().indexOf("edf.fr")==-1) {

  URLConnection conn = url.openConnection();

  conn.setRequestProperty("Accept", "application/rdf+xml");

  conn.addRequestProperty("Accept", "text/xml");

  conn.addRequestProperty("Accept", "*/*");

  Properties systemSettings = System.getProperties();

  systemSettings.put("http.proxyHost","proxy_URL");

  systemSettings.put("http.proxyPort", "proxy_Port");

  sun.misc.BASE64Encoder encoder = new sun.misc.BASE64Encoder();

  String encodedUserPwd = encoder.encode("proxy_User:proxy_Pass".getBytes());

  conn.setRequestProperty("Proxy-Authorization", "Basic " + encodedUserPwd);

  InputStream stream = conn.getInputStream();

  extractor = new OntologyNameExtractor(stream, url);

} else {

  extractor = new OntologyNameExtractor(url.openConnection().getInputStream(), url);

}

URI uri = extractor.getOntologyName();

Compile with ant (either ant plugin.jar or ant plugin.zip), and replace the original edu.stanford.smi.protegex.owl folder by the new one that will be created in the /dists folder (in .jar or .zip format).