URL stands for Uniform Resource Locator and represents a resource on the World Wide Web, such as a Web page or FTP directory.
This section shows you how to write Java programs that communicate with a URL. A URL can be broken down into parts, as follows −
protocol://host:port/path?query#ref
Examples of protocols include , , FTP, and File. The path is also referred to as the filename, and the host is also called the authority.
The following is a URL to a web page whose protocol is HTTP −
https://www.amrood.com/index.htm?language=en#j2se
Notice that this URL does not specify a port, in which case the default port for the protocol is used. With HTTP, the default port is 80.
Constructors
The java.net.URL class represents a URL and has a complete set of methods to manipulate URL in Java.
The URL class has several constructors for creating URLs, including the following −
Sr.No. | Constructors & Description |
---|---|
1 |
public URL(String protocol, String host, int port, String file) throws MalformedURLException Creates a URL by putting together the given parts. |
2 |
public URL(String protocol, String host, String file) throws MalformedURLException Identical to the previous constructor, except that the default port for the given protocol is used. |
3 |
public URL(String url) throws MalformedURLException Creates a URL from the given String. |
4 |
public URL(URL context, String url) throws MalformedURLException Creates a URL by parsing together the URL and String arguments. |
The URL class contains many methods for accessing the various parts of the URL being represented. Some of the methods in the URL class include the following −
Sr.No. | Method & Description |
---|---|
1 |
This method compares this URL for equality with another object. |
2 |
This method returns the authority of the URL. |
3 |
This method returns the contents of this URL. |
4 |
This method returns the contents of this URL. |
5 |
This method returns the default port for the protocol of the URL. |
6 |
This method returns the filename of the URL. |
7 |
This method returns the host of the URL. |
8 |
This method returns the path of the URL. |
9 |
This method returns the port of the URL. |
10 |
This method returns the protocol of the URL. |
11 |
This method returns the query part of the URL. |
12 |
This method returns the reference part of the URL. |
13 |
This method returns the userInfo part of the URL. |
14 |
This method creates and return an integer suitable for hash table indexing. |
15 |
This method returns a URLConnection instance that represents a connection to the remote object referred to by the URL. |
16 |
This method acts as openConnection(), except that the connection will be made through the specified proxy; Protocol handlers that do not support proxing will ignore the proxy parameter and make a normal connection. |
17 |
This method opens a connection to this URL and returns an InputStream for reading from that connection. |
18 |
This method compares two URLs, excluding the fragment component. |
19 |
This method sets an application”s URLStreamHandlerFactory. |
20 |
This method constructs and return a string representation of this URL. |
21 |
This method constructs and return a string representation of this URL. |
22 |
This method returns a URI equivalent to this URL. |
Example
The following URLDemo program demonstrates the various parts of a URL. A URL is entered on the command line, and the URLDemo program outputs each part of the given URL.
// File Name : URLDemo.java import java.io.IOException; import java.net.URL; public class URLDemo { public static void main(String [] args) { try { URL url = new URL("https://www.tutorialspoint.com/index.htm?language=en#j2se"); System.out.println("URL is " + url.toString()); System.out.println("protocol is " + url.getProtocol()); System.out.println("authority is " + url.getAuthority()); System.out.println("file name is " + url.getFile()); System.out.println("host is " + url.getHost()); System.out.println("path is " + url.getPath()); System.out.println("port is " + url.getPort()); System.out.println("default port is " + url.getDefaultPort()); System.out.println("query is " + url.getQuery()); System.out.println("ref is " + url.getRef()); } catch (IOException e) { e.printStackTrace(); } } }
A sample run of the this program will produce the following result −
Output
URL is https://www.tutorialspoint.com/index.htm?language=en#j2se protocol is https authority is www.tutorialspoint.com file name is /index.htm?language=en host is www.tutorialspoint.com path is /index.htm port is -1 default port is 443 query is language=en ref is j2se
URLConnections Class Methods
The openConnection() method returns a java.net.URLConnection, an abstract class whose subclasses represent the various types of URL connections.
For example −
-
If you connect to a URL whose protocol is HTTP, the openConnection() method returns an HttpURLConnection object.
-
If you connect to a URL that represents a JAR file, the openConnection() method returns a JarURLConnection object, etc.
The URLConnection class has many methods for setting or determining information about the connection, including the following −
Sr.No. | Method & Description |
---|---|
1 |
Adds a general request property specified by a key-value pair. |
2 |
Returns the value of the allowUserInteraction field for this object. |
3 |
Returns setting for connect timeout. |
4 |
Retrieves the contents of this URL connection. |
5 |
Retrieves the contents of this URL connection. |
6 |
Returns the value of the content-encoding header field. |
7 |
Returns the value of the content-length header field. |
8 |
Returns the value of the content-length header field as long. |
9 |
Returns the value of the content-type header field. |
10 |
Returns the value of the date header field. |
11 |
Returns the default value of the allowUserInteraction field. |
12 |
Returns the default value of a URLConnection”s useCaches flag. |
13 |
Returns the default value of the useCaches flag for the given protocol. |
14 |
Returns the value of this URLConnection”s doInput flag. |
15 |
Returns the value of this URLConnection”s doOutput flag. |
16 |
Returns the value of the expires header field. |
17 |
Loads filename map (a mimetable) from a data file. |
18 |
Returns the value for the nth header field. |
19 |
Returns the value of the named header field. |
20 |
Returns the value of the named field parsed as date. |
21 |
Returns the value of the named field parsed as a number. |
22 |
Returns the key for the nth header field. |
23 |
Returns the value of the named field parsed as a number. |
24 |
Returns an unmodifiable Map of the header fields. |
25 |
Returns the value of this object”s ifModifiedSince field. |
26 |
Returns an input stream that reads from this open connection. |
27 |
Returns the value of the last-modified header field. |
28 |
OutputStream getOutputStream() Returns an output stream that writes to this connection. |
29 |
Returns a permission object representing the permission necessary to make the connection represented by this object. |
30 |
Returns setting for read timeout. 0 return implies that the option is disabled (i.e., timeout of infinity). |
31 |
Returns an unmodifiable Map of general request properties for this connection. |
32 |
Returns the value of the named general request property for this connection. |
33 |
Returns the value of this URLConnection”s URL field. |
34 |
Returns the value of this URLConnection”s useCaches field. |
35 |
Tries to determine the content type of an object, based on the specified “file” component of a URL. |
36 |
Tries to determine the type of an input stream based on the characters at the beginning of the input stream. |
37 |
Set the value of the allowUserInteraction field of this URLConnection. |
38 |
Sets a specified timeout value, in milliseconds, to be used when opening a communications link to the resource referenced by this URLConnection. |
39 |
Sets the ContentHandlerFactory of an application. |
40 |
Sets the default value of the allowUserInteraction field for all future URLConnection objects to the specified value. |
41 |
Sets the default value of the useCaches field to the specified value. |
42 |
Sets the default value of the useCaches field for the named protocol to the given value. |
43 |
Sets the value of the doInput field for this URLConnection to the specified value. |
44 |
Sets the value of the doOutput field for this URLConnection to the specified value. |
45 |
static void setFileNameMap(FileNameMap map) Sets the FileNameMap. |
46 |
Sets the value of the ifModifiedSince field of this URLConnection to the specified value. |
47 |
Sets the read timeout to a specified timeout, in milliseconds. |
48 |
Sets the general request property. |
49 |
Sets the value of the useCaches field of this URLConnection to the specified value. |
50 |
Returns a String representation of this URL connection. |
Example
The following URLConnectionDemo program connects to a URL entered from the command line.
If the URL represents an HTTP resource, the connection is cast to HttpURLConnection, and the data in the resource is read one line at a time.
package com.tutorialspoint; import java.io.BufferedReader; import java.io.IOException; import java.io.InputStreamReader; import java.net.HttpURLConnection; import java.net.URL; import java.net.URLConnection; public class URLConnDemo { public static void main(String [] args) { try { URL url = new URL("https://www.tutorialspoint.com"); URLConnection urlConnection = url.openConnection(); HttpURLConnection connection = null; if(urlConnection instanceof HttpURLConnection) { connection = (HttpURLConnection) urlConnection; }else { System.out.println("Please enter an HTTP URL."); return; } BufferedReader in = new BufferedReader( new InputStreamReader(connection.getInputStream())); String urlString = ""; String current; while((current = in.readLine()) != null) { urlString += current; } System.out.println(urlString); } catch (IOException e) { e.printStackTrace(); } } }
A sample run of this program will produce the following result −
Output
$ java URLConnDemo .....a complete HTML content of home page of tutorialspoint.com.....