URLConnection FileNotFoundException for non-standard HTTP port sources

The response to my HTTP request returned with a status code 404, which resulted in a FileNotFoundException when I called getInputStream(). I still wanted to read the response body, so I had to use a different method: HttpURLConnection#getErrorStream().

Here’s a JavaDoc snippet of getErrorStream():

Returns the error stream if the
connection failed but the server sent
useful data nonetheless. The typical
example is when an HTTP server
responds with a 404, which will cause
a FileNotFoundException to be thrown
in connect, but the server sent an
HTML help page with suggestions as to
what to do.

Usage example:

public static String httpGet(String url) {
    HttpURLConnection con = null;
    InputStream is = null;
    try {
        con = (HttpURLConnection) new URL(url).openConnection();
        con.connect();

        //4xx: client error, 5xx: server error. See: http://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2616/rfc2616-sec10.html.
        boolean isError = con.getResponseCode() >= 400;
        //In HTTP error cases, HttpURLConnection only gives you the input stream via #getErrorStream().
        is = isError ? con.getErrorStream() : con.getInputStream();

        String contentEncoding = con.getContentEncoding() != null ? con.getContentEncoding() : "UTF-8";
        return IOUtils.toString(is, contentEncoding); //Apache Commons IO
    } catch (Exception e) {
        throw new IllegalStateException(e);
    } finally {
        //Note: Closing the InputStream manually may be unnecessary, depending on the implementation of HttpURLConnection#disconnect(). Sun/Oracle's implementation does close it for you in said method.
        if (is != null) {
            try {
                is.close();
            } catch (IOException e) {
                throw new IllegalStateException(e);
            }
        }
        if (con != null) {
            con.disconnect();
        }
    }
}