Play 2.x WS API and self signed certificates

The play web service API provides an easy way to use your play application as an http client. Usually you should use Play's asynchronous mechanisms to use the web service response. But sometime you just want to wait for the web service responce (in a job). You can do this with the following method:

public static String call(String url, String contentType) {
    String result = null;
    try {
        F.Promise wsPromise = WS.url(url).setContentType(contentType).get();
        result = wsPromise.get(THIRTY_SECONDS).getBody();
    } catch (Exception e){
        log.error("Error in webservice call to: " + url);
    }
    return result;
}

When the web service you want to call uses self signed certificates you will run into an exception:

javax.net.ssl.SSLHandshakeException: General SSLEngine problem

To allow self-signed ssl certificates you just have to add the following to your application.conf.

# this is needed for self signed certificates
ws.acceptAnyCertificate=true

When you unit test your web service call make sure your test runs inside a FakeApplication.