code: private HttpURLConnection getURLConnection(String str)
              throws MalformedURLException {
          try {
  
              if (isHttps) {
                  /* when communicating with the server which has unsigned or invalid
                  * certificate (https), SSLException or IOException is thrown.
                  * the following line is a hack to avoid that
                  */
                  Security.addProvider(new com.sun.net.ssl.internal.ssl.Provider());
                  System.setProperty("java.protocol.handler.pkgs", "com.sun.net.ssl.internal.www.protocol");
                  if (isProxy) {
                      System.setProperty("https.proxyHost", proxyHost);
                      System.setProperty("https.proxyPort", proxyPort + "");
                  }
              }
              else
              {
                  if (isProxy)
                  {
                      System.setProperty("http.proxyHost", proxyHost);
                      System.setProperty("http.proxyPort", proxyPort  + "");
                  }
              }
  
              URL url = new URL(str);
              HttpURLConnection uc = (HttpURLConnection)url.openConnection();
  
              // if this header has not been set by a request set the user agent.
              if (headers == null ||
                      (headers != null &&  headers.get("user-agent") == null)) {
                  // set user agent to mimic a common browser
                  String ua="Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; .NET CLR 1.1.4322)";
                  uc.setRequestProperty("user-agent", ua);
              }
  
              uc.setInstanceFollowRedirects(false);
  
              return uc;
          }
          catch (MalformedURLException me)
          {
              throw new MalformedURLException(str + " is not a valid URL");
          }
          catch (Exception e)
          {
              throw new RuntimeException("Unknown error creating UrlConnection: " + e);
          }
      }
docs: private method to get the URLConnection
  @param str URL string