Sample Java servlet code snippet showing how to use Apache HTTPComponents (tested with httpclient-4.2.3.jar and httpcore-4.2.2.jar) to connect to a remote Adobe Experience Manager (CQ) instance and GET a web page for server health check (heartbeat) purposes.

get_cq_page.java

import java.io.IOException;
import java.io.PrintWriter;
import java.net.URI;
import java.net.URISyntaxException;

import org.apache.http.auth.AuthScope;
import org.apache.http.auth.UsernamePasswordCredentials;
import org.apache.http.client.ResponseHandler;
import org.apache.http.client.methods.HttpGet;
import org.apache.http.client.utils.URIBuilder;
import org.apache.http.impl.client.BasicResponseHandler;
import org.apache.http.impl.client.DefaultHttpClient;
import org.apache.http.params.BasicHttpParams;
import org.apache.http.params.CoreConnectionPNames;
import org.apache.http.params.HttpParams;

String strHost = "cq-author.company.com";
String cqUser = "admin";
String cqPassword = "admin";
int intPort = 4502;

PrintWriter out;

DefaultHttpClient defaultHttpClient = new DefaultHttpClient();

// Set the value for the 'User-Agent' HTTP Request Header
defaultHttpClient.getParams().setParameter("http.useragent", "Apache HTTPComponents");

// Control connection parameters instead of leaving them to defaults
HttpParams httpParams = new BasicHttpParams();
params.setIntParameter(CoreConnectionPNames.CONNECTION_TIMEOUT, 5000); // 5 seconds socket connection timeout
params.setIntParameter(CoreConnectionPNames.SO_TIMEOUT, 10000); // 10 seconds max wait for response from server, after establishing socket connection
params.setBooleanParameter(CoreConnectionPNames.SO_KEEPALIVE, false);
params.setBooleanParameter(CoreConnectionPNames.STALE_CONNECTION_CHECK, true);

defaultHttpClient.setParams(params);

// Provide the authentication credentials
defaultHttpClient.getCredentialsProvider().setCredentials(new AuthScope(strHost,intPort), new UsernamePasswordCredentials(cqUser, cqPassword));

URIBuilder uriBuilder = new URIBuilder();

// Remember to remove URL encodings in the URL
// See http://www.w3schools.com/tags/ref_urlencode.asp
uriBuilder.setScheme("http").setHost(strHost).setPort(intPort).setPath("/system/console/jmx/com.adobe.granite:type=QueryStat");

URI uri = null;

try
{
	uri = uriBuilder.build();
}
catch (URISyntaxException e)
{
	System.out.println("Exception building URI [" + uri.toString() + "]");
	out = response.getWriter();
	e.printStackTrace(out);
	// No point in continuing...
	return;
}

HttpGet httpGet = new HttpGet(uri);

System.out.println("Executing HTTP GET request " + httpGet.getURI());

// Create a response handler
// http://hc.apache.org/httpcomponents-client-ga/httpclient/apidocs/org/apache/http/impl/client/BasicResponseHandler.html
ResponseHandler<String> responseHandler = new BasicResponseHandler();

// Try connecting to CQ
try
{
	String strResponseBody = defaultHttpClient.execute(httpGet, responseHandler);
	// Perform other actions with the returned page content in strResponseBody
}
catch(Exception e)
{
	out = response.getWriter();
  	e.printStackTrace(out);
}
finally // cleanup and reset
{
	httpGet.releaseConnection();
	httpGet.reset();
	httpGet = null;
  	responseHandler =null;
}

Thanks. I was looking for how to do exactly that.