Downloading SetupTools in Maximo/Jython fails with HTTP error 403 SSL is required - ssl

Question

Appendix A of The Definitive Guide to Jython describes downloading SetupTools for use with Jython.
https://jython.readthedocs.io/en/latest/appendixA/
This indicates to me that it should be possible to download and use SetupTools from within a Jython automation script in Maximo (v7.6 in my case). The book points us to the following url to copy a Jython script that will do this:
http://peak.telecommunity.com/dist/ez_setup.py
I add one line to the above script to call the function "use_setuptools":
use_setuptools()
Then I create a push button on a Maximo application and associate the aforementioned script with the button press I get the following error:
System Message BMXAA7837E - An error occured that prevented the
EZ_SETUP script for the EZ_SETUP launch point from running.
urllib2.HTTPError: HTTP Error 403: SSL is required in at line
number 280
The stack trace points to the following line in the function "download_setuptools" which is called by "use_setuptools":
src = urllib2.urlopen(url)
This appears to be because the url requested, in my case:
http://pypi.python.org/packages/2.5/s/setuptools/setuptools-0.6c11-py2.5.egg
...is redirected a few times before arriving at the following url:
https://files.pythonhosted.org/packages/98/d3/ed3bc7e3f4b143092862dab99d984261ac4be6a40d4fb1e66d2a10e9ea99/setuptools-0.6c11-py2.5.egg
Note the url uses HTTPS not HTTP. The following indicates why this may be so:
https://sourceforge.net/p/pypi/support-requests/300/
The jython.jar included with Maximo does not include the ssl module so we could either:
Download the ssl module manually and copy it to the correct location on the server.
Download the appropriate egg file manually over HTTPS and copy it to the correct location on the server.
Bypass the problem by creating a mirror for the file we're looking for that is accessible over HTTP and use that url in the code.
Whilst these are feasible I'd prefer to modify the code to ignore the SSL certificate if possible, however all the workarounds on StackOverflow and elsewhere seem to require that you're able to "import ssl" in order to bypass it which rather seems to defeat the purpose.
Ideally I'm looking for a solution that modifies the code from the url provided above to get it to work with Maximo/Jython 2.5.2 and doesn't require downloading and adding new modules or packages and all that this entails with Maximo. Bypassing or temporarily disabling ssl is fine as the code checks the hash of the downloaded .egg file. This would be my preferred solution if possible.

Answer 1

In my experience, automation scripting works best if you can stay "as Java as possible" and "as Maximo as possible". So, I would use the LIB_HTTPCLIENT script from the Scripting 76 Features document (the first example code, whose name is given by inference in the second bit of code) to try to download the SetupTools.
In case that document moves again, here is the LIB_HTTPCLIENT script. Note that the url variable is expected to be passed to this library script by the calling script.
from psdi.iface.router import HTTPHandler
from java.util import HashMap
from java.util import String
handler = HTTPHandler()
map = HashMap()
map.put("URL",url)
map.put("HTTPMETHOD","GET")
responseBytes = handler.invoke(map,None)
response = String(responseBytes,"utf-8")