A generic http header parser, lifted from Apache's FileUpload class.

HeaderParser.java

/*
 * Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one or more
 * contributor license agreements.  See the NOTICE file distributed with
 * this work for additional information regarding copyright ownership.
 * The ASF licenses this file to You under the Apache License, Version 2.0
 * (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with
 * the License.  You may obtain a copy of the License at
 *
 *      http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
 *
 * Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
 * distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
 * WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
 * See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
 * limitations under the License.
 */

import java.util.HashMap;

public class HeaderParser {

    /* 
        This is a public, static version of Apache FileUpload's awesome header parser, with minor modifications to use
        a HashMap instead of an internal FileItemsImpl and made public instead of protected.
     */
    public static HashMap<String, String> getParsedHeaders(String headerPart) {
        final int len = headerPart.length();
        HashMap<String, String> headers = new HashMap<String, String>();
        int start = 0;
        for (;;) {
            int end = parseEndOfLine(headerPart, start);
            if (start == end) {
                break;
            }
            String header = headerPart.substring(start, end);
            start = end + 2;
            while (start < len) {
                int nonWs = start;
                while (nonWs < len) {
                    char c = headerPart.charAt(nonWs);
                    if (c != ' '  &&  c != '\t') {
                        break;
                    }
                    ++nonWs;
                }
                if (nonWs == start) {
                    break;
                }
                // Continuation line found
                end = parseEndOfLine(headerPart, nonWs);
                header += " " + headerPart.substring(nonWs, end);
                start = end + 2;
            }
            parseHeaderLine(headers, header);
        }
        return headers;
    }

    public static int parseEndOfLine(String headerPart, int end) {
        int index = end;
        for (;;) {
            int offset = headerPart.indexOf('\r', index);
            if (offset == -1  ||  offset + 1 >= headerPart.length()) {
                throw new IllegalStateException(
                        "Expected headers to be terminated by an empty line.");
            }
            if (headerPart.charAt(offset + 1) == '\n') {
                return offset;
            }
            index = offset + 1;
        }
    }

    public static void parseHeaderLine(HashMap<String,String> headers, String header) {
        final int colonOffset = header.indexOf(':');
        if (colonOffset == -1) {
            // This header line is malformed, skip it.
            return;
        }
        String headerName = header.substring(0, colonOffset).trim();
        String headerValue =
                header.substring(header.indexOf(':') + 1).trim();
        headers.put(headerName, headerValue);
    }

}