Problem with $xwiki.getURLContent()

Hi! I'm trying to use $xwiki.getURLContent() but I can't make it to work. I've tried both from velocity, like this: #set ($response = $xwiki.getURLContent("http://mysite.com")) $response ...and invoking the xwiki code from a plugin, like this: public String getUrlContent(String url) throws IOException { String content = ""; try { content = context.getWiki().getURLContent(url, context); } catch (Exception e) { //ooops } return content; } I've been testing with a URL that points to a web server of mine, and according to the log, no request is done by the above code. Can anyone tell me what I'm doing wrong? Any help would be greatly appreciated! :-) Thomas