jhy/jsoup · error · IOException

Too many redirects occurred trying to load URL

Error message

Too many redirects occurred trying to load URL %s

What it means

Jsoup caps redirect chains at MAX_REDIRECTS to protect against infinite or circular redirect loops. When following redirects exceeds that cap, execute() throws IOException with this message, including the URL of the last response. It mirrors the same safeguard in browsers and HTTP clients.

Solutions

1. Open the URL in a browser or curl -IL to find and fix the redirect loop server-side
2. Manually follow redirects with followRedirects(false) and stop after detecting a repeated URL
3. Send required cookies/auth headers so the server stops redirecting to login
4. If legitimate deep chains exist, resend from the last Location with your own counter

Example fix

// before
Document doc = Jsoup.connect(url).get(); // IOException on loop
// after
Connection.Response res = Jsoup.connect(url).followRedirects(false).execute();
Set<String> seen = new HashSet<>();
while (res.statusCode() / 100 == 3 && seen.add(res.url().toString())) {
    res = Jsoup.connect(res.header("Location")).followRedirects(false).execute();
}

try { doc = Jsoup.connect(url).get(); } catch (IOException e) { if (e.getMessage().startsWith("Too many redirects")) { /* flag URL as looping */ } }

When it happens

Trigger: A server redirect loop (A -> B -> A), misconfigured load balancers bouncing requests, or cookies/auth never accepted so the server keeps redirecting to a login page that redirects back.

Common situations: >20-deep redirect chains; www/non-www or http/https rewrite loops; login redirects that fail because session cookies are not persisted; geo/consent walls that never settle.

Understand the failure class

Background: "API error: {status}" and "HTTP 401/403/404/429/5xx" errors: non-2xx HTTP responses explained — this error's family across 27 libraries.

Related errors

• You must execute the request before getting a response.
• URL not set. Make sure to call #url(...) before executing…
• Cannot follow redirect with a streamed request body…
• HTTP error fetching URL
• Unhandled content type. Must be a text or XML media type

AI-assisted analysis of jhy/jsoup@9851ac5d9c (2026-09-08). Data as JSON: /api/errors/46cabd8d32201433. Report an issue: GitHub.

Appendix: source

Thrown at src/main/java/org/jsoup/helper/HttpConnection.java:1204

        }

        // set up url, method, header, cookies
        void prepareResponse(Map<String, List<String>> resHeaders, HttpConnection.@Nullable Response previousResponse) throws IOException {
            processResponseHeaders(resHeaders); // includes cookie key/val read during header scan
            CookieUtil.storeCookies(req, this, url, resHeaders); // add set cookies to cookie store

            if (previousResponse != null) { // was redirected
                // map previous response cookies into this response cookies() object
                for (Map.Entry<String, String> prevCookie : previousResponse.cookies().entrySet()) {
                    if (!hasCookie(prevCookie.getKey()))
                        cookie(prevCookie.getKey(), prevCookie.getValue());
                }
                previousResponse.safeClose();

                // enforce too many redirects:
                numRedirects = previousResponse.numRedirects + 1;
                if (numRedirects >= MAX_REDIRECTS)
                    throw new IOException(String.format("Too many redirects occurred trying to load URL %s", previousResponse.url()));
            }
        }

        void processResponseHeaders(Map<String, List<String>> resHeaders) {
            for (Map.Entry<String, List<String>> entry : resHeaders.entrySet()) {
                String name = entry.getKey();
                if (name == null)
                    continue; // http/1.1 line

                List<String> values = entry.getValue();
                for (String value : values) {
                    addHeader(name, fixHeaderEncoding(value));
                }
            }
        }

        /**
         Servers may encode response headers in UTF-8 instead of RFC defined 8859. The JVM decodes the headers (before we see them) as 8859, which can lead to mojibake data.

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