Adding header for HttpURLConnection

Just cause I don't see this bit of information in the answers above, the reason the code snippet originally posted doesn't work correctly is because the encodedBytes variable is a byte[] and not a String value. If you pass the byte[] to a new String() as below, the code snippet works perfectly.

encodedBytes = Base64.encode(authorization.getBytes(), 0);
authorization = "Basic " + new String(encodedBytes);

If you are using Java 8, use the code below.

URLConnection connection = url.openConnection();
HttpURLConnection httpConn = (HttpURLConnection) connection;

String basicAuth = Base64.getEncoder().encodeToString((username+":"+password).getBytes(StandardCharsets.UTF_8));
httpConn.setRequestProperty ("Authorization", "Basic "+basicAuth);

I have used the following code in the past and it had worked with basic authentication enabled in TomCat:

URL myURL = new URL(serviceURL);
HttpURLConnection myURLConnection = (HttpURLConnection)myURL.openConnection();

String userCredentials = "username:password";
String basicAuth = "Basic " + new String(Base64.getEncoder().encode(userCredentials.getBytes()));

myURLConnection.setRequestProperty ("Authorization", basicAuth);
myURLConnection.setRequestMethod("POST");
myURLConnection.setRequestProperty("Content-Type", "application/x-www-form-urlencoded");
myURLConnection.setRequestProperty("Content-Length", "" + postData.getBytes().length);
myURLConnection.setRequestProperty("Content-Language", "en-US");
myURLConnection.setUseCaches(false);
myURLConnection.setDoInput(true);
myURLConnection.setDoOutput(true);

You can try the above code. The code above is for POST, and you can modify it for GET