With revision 38038 in the trunk, I made a change that enables this usage pattern:

Connection cn = Connection("http://localhost/labkey", "jeckels@labkey.com", "PASSWORD"); CloseableHttpClient httpClient = cn.ensureAuthenticated(); HttpGet get = new HttpGet(url); CloseableHttpResponse response = httpClient.execute(get); HttpEntity entity = response.getEntity(); String fileContents = EntityUtils.toString(entity);

I think this fits what you've requested, but please let me know.

Thanks, Josh