Class URL

java.lang.Object
java.net.URL
All Implemented Interfaces:
Serializable
public final classURLextendsObjectimplementsSerializable
ClassURL represents a Uniform Resource Locator, a pointer to a "resource" on the World Wide Web. A resource can be something as simple as a file or a directory, or it can be a reference to a more complicated object, such as a query to a database or to a search engine. More information on the types of URLs and their formats can be found at:Types of URL

In general, a URL can be broken into several parts. Consider the following example:

     http://www.example.com/docs/resource1.html

The URL above indicates that the protocol to use ishttp (HyperText Transfer Protocol) and that the information resides on a host machine namedwww.example.com. The information on that host machine is named/docs/resource1.html. The exact meaning of this name on the host machine is both protocol dependent and host dependent. The information normally resides in a file, but it could be generated on the fly. This component of the URL is called thepath component.

A URL can optionally specify a "port", which is the port number to which the TCP connection is made on the remote host machine. If the port is not specified, the default port for the protocol is used instead. For example, the default port forhttp is80. An alternative port could be specified as:

     http://www.example.com:1080/docs/resource1.html

The syntax ofURL is defined byRFC 2396: Uniform Resource Identifiers (URI): Generic Syntax, amended byRFC 2732: Format for Literal IPv6 Addresses in URLs. The Literal IPv6 address format also supports scope_ids. The syntax and usage of scope_ids is describedhere.

A URL may have appended to it a "fragment", also known as a "ref" or a "reference". The fragment is indicated by the sharp sign character "#" followed by more characters. For example,

     http://www.example.com/index.html#chapter1

This fragment is not technically part of the URL. Rather, it indicates that after the specified resource is retrieved, the application is specifically interested in that part of the document that has the tagchapter1 attached to it. The meaning of a tag is resource specific.

An application can also specify a "relative URL", which contains only enough information to reach the resource relative to another URL. Relative URLs are frequently used within HTML pages. For example, if the contents of the URL:

     http://www.example.com/index.html
contained within it the relative URL:
     FAQ.html
it would be a shorthand for:
     http://www.example.com/FAQ.html

The relative URL need not specify all the components of a URL. If the protocol, host name, or port number is missing, the value is inherited from the fully specified URL. The file component must be specified. The optional fragment is not inherited.

Constructing instances ofURL

Thejava.net.URL constructors are deprecated. Developers are encouraged to usejava.net.URI to parse or construct aURL. In cases where an instance of java.net.URL is needed to open a connection,URI can be used to construct or parse the URL string, possibly callingURI.parseServerAuthority() to validate that the authority component can be parsed as a server-based authority, and then callingURI.toURL() to create theURL instance.

The URL constructors are specified to throwMalformedURLException but the actual parsing/validation that is performed is implementation dependent. Some parsing/validation may be delayed until later, when the underlyingstream handler's implementation is called. Being able to construct an instance ofURL doesn't provide any guarantee about its conformance to the URL syntax specification.

The URL class does not itself encode or decode any URL components according to the escaping mechanism defined in RFC2396. It is the responsibility of the caller to encode any fields, which need to be escaped prior to calling URL, and also to decode any escaped fields, that are returned from URL. Furthermore, because URL has no knowledge of URL escaping, it does not recognise equivalence between the encoded or decoded form of the same URL. For example, the two URLs:

    http://foo.com/hello world/ and http://foo.com/hello%20world
would be considered not equal to each other.

Note, theURI class does perform escaping of its component fields in certain circumstances. The recommended way to manage the encoding and decoding of URLs is to useURI, and to convert between these two classes usingtoURI() andURI.toURL().

TheURLEncoder andURLDecoder classes can also be used, but only for HTML form encoding, which is not the same as the encoding scheme defined in RFC2396.

API Note:
Applications working with file paths and file URIs should take great care to use the appropriate methods to convert between the two. ThePath.of(URI) factory method and theFile(URI) constructor can be used to createPath orFile objects from a file URI.Path.toUri() andFile.toURI() can be used to create aURI from a file path, which can be converted to URL usingURI.toURL(). Applications should never try toconstruct orparse aURL from the direct string representation of aFile orPath instance.

Before constructing aURL from aURI, and depending on the protocol involved, applications should consider validating whether the URI authoritycan be parsed as server-based.

Some components of a URL or URI, such asuserinfo, may be abused to construct misleading URLs or URIs. Applications that deal with URLs or URIs should take into account the recommendations advised inRFC3986, Section 7, Security Considerations.

AllURL constructors may throwMalformedURLException. In particular, if the underlyingURLStreamHandler implementation rejects, or is known to reject, any of the parameters,MalformedURLException may be thrown. Typically, a constructor that calls the stream handler'sparseURL method may throwMalformedURLException if the underlying stream handler implementation of that method throwsIllegalArgumentException. However, which checks are performed, or not, by the stream handlers is implementation dependent, and callers should not rely on such checks for full URL validation.

Since:
1.0
External Specifications
See Also:

  • Constructor Details

    • URL

      @Deprecated(since="20")public URL(String protocol,String host, int port,String file) throwsMalformedURLException
      Deprecated.
      UseURI.toURL() to construct an instance of URL. See the note onconstructor deprecation for more details.
      Creates aURL object from the specifiedprotocol,host,port number, andfile.

      host can be expressed as a host name or a literal IP address. If IPv6 literal address is used, it should be enclosed in square brackets ('[' and']'), as specified byRFC 2732; However, the literal IPv6 address format defined inRFC 2373: IP Version 6 Addressing Architecture is also accepted.

      Specifying aport number of-1 indicates that the URL should use the default port for the protocol.

      If this is the first URL object being created with the specified protocol, astream protocol handler object, an instance of classURLStreamHandler, is created for that protocol:

      1. If the application has previously set up an instance ofURLStreamHandlerFactory as the stream handler factory, then thecreateURLStreamHandler method of that instance is called with the protocol string as an argument to create the stream protocol handler.
      2. If noURLStreamHandlerFactory has yet been set up, or if the factory'screateURLStreamHandler method returnsnull, then theServiceLoader mechanism is used to locateURLStreamHandlerProvider implementations using the system class loader. The order that providers are located is implementation specific, and an implementation is free to cache the located providers. AServiceConfigurationError,Error orRuntimeException thrown from thecreateURLStreamHandler, if encountered, will be propagated to the calling thread. The createURLStreamHandler method of each provider, if instantiated, is invoked, with the protocol string, until a provider returns non-null, or all providers have been exhausted.
      3. If the previous step fails to find a protocol handler, the constructor reads the value of the system property:
        java.protocol.handler.pkgs
        If the value of that system property is notnull, it is interpreted as a list of packages separated by a vertical slash character '|'. The constructor tries to load the class named:
        <package>.<protocol>.Handler
        where<package> is replaced by the name of the package and<protocol> is replaced by the name of the protocol. If this class does not exist, or if the class exists but it is not a subclass ofURLStreamHandler, then the next package in the list is tried.
      4. If the previous step fails to find a protocol handler, then the constructor tries to load a built-in protocol handler. If this class does not exist, or if the class exists but it is not a subclass ofURLStreamHandler, then aMalformedURLException is thrown.

      Protocol handlers for the following protocols are guaranteed to exist on the search path:

      • http
      • https
      • file
      • jar
      Protocol handlers for additional protocols may also be available. Some protocol handlers, for example those used for loading platform classes or classes on the class path, may not be overridden. The details of such restrictions, and when those restrictions apply (during initialization of the runtime for example), are implementation specific and therefore not specified

      No validation of the inputs is performed by this constructor.

      Parameters:
      protocol - the name of the protocol to use.
      host - the name of the host.
      port - the port number on the host.
      file - the file on the host
      Throws:
      MalformedURLException - if an unknown protocol or the port is a negative number other than -1, or if the underlying stream handler implementation rejects, or is known to reject, theURL
      External Specifications
      See Also:

    • URL

      @Deprecated(since="20")public URL(String protocol,String host,String file) throwsMalformedURLException
      Deprecated.
      UseURI.toURL() to construct an instance of URL. See the note onconstructor deprecation for more details.
      Creates a URL from the specifiedprotocol name,host name, andfile name. The default port for the specified protocol is used.

      This constructor is equivalent to the four-argument constructor with the only difference of using the default port for the specified protocol. No validation of the inputs is performed by this constructor.

      Parameters:
      protocol - the name of the protocol to use.
      host - the name of the host.
      file - the file on the host.
      Throws:
      MalformedURLException - if an unknown protocol is specified, or if the underlying stream handler implementation rejects, or is known to reject, theURL
      See Also:

    • URL

      @Deprecated(since="20")public URL(String protocol,String host, int port,String file,URLStreamHandler handler) throwsMalformedURLException
      Deprecated.
      Useof(URI, URLStreamHandler) to construct an instance of URL associated with a custom protocol handler. See the note onconstructor deprecation for more details.
      Creates aURL object from the specifiedprotocol,host,port number,file, andhandler. Specifying aport number of-1 indicates that the URL should use the default port for the protocol. Specifying ahandler ofnull indicates that the URL should use a default stream handler for the protocol, as outlined for:URL(java.lang.String, java.lang.String, int, java.lang.String) No validation of the inputs is performed by this constructor.
      Parameters:
      protocol - the name of the protocol to use.
      host - the name of the host.
      port - the port number on the host.
      file - the file on the host
      handler - the stream handler for the URL.
      Throws:
      MalformedURLException - if an unknown protocol or the port is a negative number other than -1, or if the underlying stream handler implementation rejects, or is known to reject, theURL
      See Also:

    • URL

      @Deprecated(since="20")public URL(String spec) throwsMalformedURLException
      Deprecated.
      UseURI.toURL() to construct an instance of URL. See the note onconstructor deprecation for more details.
      Creates aURL object from theString representation.

      This constructor is equivalent to a call to the two-argument constructor with anull first argument.

      Parameters:
      spec - theString to parse as a URL.
      Throws:
      MalformedURLException - if no protocol is specified, or an unknown protocol is found, orspec isnull, or the parsed URL fails to comply with the specific syntax of the associated protocol, or the underlying stream handler'sparseURL method throwsIllegalArgumentException
      See Also:

    • URL

      @Deprecated(since="20")public URL(URL context,String spec) throwsMalformedURLException
      Deprecated.
      UseURI.toURL() to construct an instance of URL. See the note onconstructor deprecation for more details.
      Creates a URL by parsing the given spec within a specified context. The new URL is created from the given context URL and the spec argument as described in RFC2396 "Uniform Resource Identifiers : Generic Syntax" :
                <scheme>://<authority><path>?<query>#<fragment>
      The reference is parsed into the scheme, authority, path, query and fragment parts. If the path component is empty and the scheme, authority, and query components are undefined, then the new URL is a reference to the current document. Otherwise, the fragment and query parts present in the spec are used in the new URL.

      If the scheme component is defined in the given spec and does not match the scheme of the context, then the new URL is created as an absolute URL based on the spec alone. Otherwise the scheme component is inherited from the context URL.

      If the authority component is present in the spec then the spec is treated as absolute and the spec authority and path will replace the context authority and path. If the authority component is absent in the spec then the authority of the new URL will be inherited from the context.

      If the spec's path component begins with a slash character "/" then the path is treated as absolute and the spec path replaces the context path.

      Otherwise, the path is treated as a relative path and is appended to the context path, as described in RFC2396. Also, in this case, the path is canonicalized through the removal of directory changes made by occurrences of ".." and ".".

      For a more detailed description of URL parsing, refer to RFC2396.

      Implementation Requirements:
      Parsing the URL includes calling theparseURL method on the selected handler.
      Parameters:
      context - the context in which to parse the specification.
      spec - theString to parse as a URL.
      Throws:
      MalformedURLException - if no protocol is specified, or an unknown protocol is found, orspec isnull, or the parsed URL fails to comply with the specific syntax of the associated protocol, or the underlying stream handler'sparseURL method throwsIllegalArgumentException
      See Also:

    • URL

      @Deprecated(since="20")public URL(URL context,String spec,URLStreamHandler handler) throwsMalformedURLException
      Deprecated.
      Useof(URI, URLStreamHandler) to construct an instance of URL associated with a custom protocol handler. See the note onconstructor deprecation for more details.
      Creates a URL by parsing the given spec with the specified handler within a specified context. If the handler is null, the parsing occurs as with the two argument constructor.
      Implementation Requirements:
      Parsing the URL includes calling theparseURL method on the selected handler.
      Parameters:
      context - the context in which to parse the specification.
      spec - theString to parse as a URL.
      handler - the stream handler for the URL.
      Throws:
      MalformedURLException - if no protocol is specified, or an unknown protocol is found, orspec isnull, or the parsed URL fails to comply with the specific syntax of the associated protocol, or the underlying stream handler'sparseURL method throwsIllegalArgumentException
      See Also:

  • Method Details

    • of

      public static URL of(URI uri,URLStreamHandler handler) throwsMalformedURLException
      Creates a URL from a URI, as if by invokinguri.toURL(), but associating it with the givenURLStreamHandler, if allowed.
      API Note:
      Applications should consider performing additional integrity checks before constructing aURL and opening a connection. See theAPI note in the class level API documentation.
      Implementation Requirements:
      The implementation of this method includes calling theparseURL method on the selected handler.
      Parameters:
      uri - theURI from which the returnedURL should be built
      handler - a custom protocol stream handler for the returnedURL. Can benull, in which case the default stream handler for the protocol if any, will be used.
      Returns:
      a newURL instance created from the givenURI and associated with the givenURLStreamHandler, if any
      Throws:
      NullPointerException - ifuri isnull
      IllegalArgumentException - if no protocol is specified (theuri scheme isnull), or if theURLStreamHandler is notnull and can not be set for the given protocol
      MalformedURLException - if an unknown protocol is found, or the given URI fails to comply with the specific syntax of the associated protocol, or the underlying stream handler'sparseURL method throwsIllegalArgumentException
      Since:
      20
      See Also:

    • getQuery

      public String getQuery()
      Gets the query part of thisURL.
      Returns:
      the query part of thisURL, ornull if one does not exist
      Since:
      1.3

    • getPath

      public String getPath()
      Gets the path part of thisURL.
      Returns:
      the path part of thisURL, or an empty string if one does not exist
      Since:
      1.3

    • getUserInfo

      public String getUserInfo()
      Gets the userInfo part of thisURL.
      Returns:
      the userInfo part of thisURL, ornull if one does not exist
      Since:
      1.3

    • getAuthority

      public String getAuthority()
      Gets the authority part of thisURL.
      Returns:
      the authority part of thisURL
      Since:
      1.3

    • getPort

      public int getPort()
      Gets the port number of thisURL.
      Returns:
      the port number, or -1 if the port is not set

    • getDefaultPort

      public int getDefaultPort()
      Gets the default port number of the protocol associated with thisURL. If the URL scheme or the URLStreamHandler for the URL do not define a default port number, then -1 is returned.
      Returns:
      the port number
      Since:
      1.4

    • getProtocol

      public String getProtocol()
      Gets the protocol name of thisURL.
      Returns:
      the protocol of thisURL.

    • getHost

      public String getHost()
      Gets the host name of thisURL, if applicable. The format of the host conforms to RFC 2732, i.e. for a literal IPv6 address, this method will return the IPv6 address enclosed in square brackets ('[' and']').
      Returns:
      the host name of thisURL.

    • getFile

      public String getFile()
      Gets the file name of thisURL. The returned file portion will be the same asgetPath(), plus the concatenation of the value ofgetQuery(), if any. If there is no query portion, this method andgetPath() will return identical results.
      Returns:
      the file name of thisURL, or an empty string if one does not exist

    • getRef

      public String getRef()
      Gets the anchor (also known as the "reference") of thisURL.
      Returns:
      the anchor (also known as the "reference") of thisURL, ornull if one does not exist

    • equals

      public boolean equals(Object obj)
      Compares this URL for equality with another object.

      If the given object is not a URL then this method immediately returnsfalse.

      Two URL objects are equal if they have the same protocol, reference equivalent hosts, have the same port number on the host, and the same file and fragment of the file.

      Two hosts are considered equivalent if both host names can be resolved into the same IP addresses; else if either host name can't be resolved, the host names must be equal without regard to case; or both host names equal to null.

      Since hosts comparison requires name resolution, this operation is a blocking operation.

      Note: The defined behavior forequals is known to be inconsistent with virtual hosting in HTTP.

      Overrides:
      equals in class Object
      Parameters:
      obj - the URL to compare against.
      Returns:
      true if the objects are the same;false otherwise.
      See Also:

    • hashCode

      public int hashCode()
      Creates an integer suitable for hash table indexing.

      The hash code is based upon all the URL components relevant for URL comparison. As such, this operation is a blocking operation.

      Overrides:
      hashCode in class Object
      Returns:
      a hash code for thisURL.
      See Also:

    • sameFile

      public boolean sameFile(URL other)
      Compares two URLs, excluding the fragment component.

      Returnstrue if thisURL and theother argument are equal without taking the fragment component into consideration.

      Parameters:
      other - theURL to compare against.
      Returns:
      true if they reference the same remote object;false otherwise.

    • toString

      public String toString()
      Constructs a string representation of thisURL. The string is created by calling thetoExternalForm method of the stream protocol handler for this object.
      Overrides:
      toString in class Object
      Returns:
      a string representation of this object.
      See Also:

    • toExternalForm

      public String toExternalForm()
      Constructs a string representation of thisURL. The string is created by calling thetoExternalForm method of the stream protocol handler for this object.
      Returns:
      a string representation of this object.
      See Also:

    • toURI

      public URI toURI() throwsURISyntaxException
      Returns aURI equivalent to this URL. This method functions in the same way asnew URI (this.toString()).

      Note, any URL instance that complies with RFC 2396 can be converted to a URI. However, some URLs that are not strictly in compliance can not be converted to a URI.

      Returns:
      a URI instance equivalent to this URL.
      Throws:
      URISyntaxException - if this URL is not formatted strictly according to RFC2396 and cannot be converted to a URI.
      Since:
      1.5

    • openConnection

      public URLConnection openConnection() throwsIOException
      Returns aURLConnection instance that represents a connection to the remote object referred to by theURL.

      A new instance ofURLConnection is created every time when invoking theURLStreamHandler.openConnection(URL) method of the protocol handler for this URL.

      It should be noted that a URLConnection instance does not establish the actual network connection on creation. This will happen only when callingURLConnection.connect().

      If for the URL's protocol (such as HTTP or JAR), there exists a public, specialized URLConnection subclass belonging to one of the following packages or one of their subpackages: java.lang, java.io, java.util, java.net, the connection returned will be of that subclass. For example, for HTTP an HttpURLConnection will be returned, and for JAR a JarURLConnection will be returned.

      Returns:
      aURLConnection linking to the URL.
      Throws:
      IOException - if an I/O exception occurs.
      See Also:

    • openConnection

      public URLConnection openConnection(Proxy proxy) throwsIOException
      Same asopenConnection(), except that the connection will be made through the specified proxy; Protocol handlers that do not support proxying will ignore the proxy parameter and make a normal connection. Invoking this method preempts the system's defaultProxySelector settings.
      Parameters:
      proxy - the Proxy through which this connection will be made. If direct connection is desired, Proxy.NO_PROXY should be specified.
      Returns:
      aURLConnection to the URL.
      Throws:
      IOException - if an I/O exception occurs.
      IllegalArgumentException - will be thrown if proxy is null, or proxy has the wrong type
      UnsupportedOperationException - if the subclass that implements the protocol handler doesn't support this method.
      Since:
      1.5
      See Also:

    • openStream

      public final InputStream openStream() throwsIOException
      Opens a connection to thisURL and returns anInputStream for reading from that connection. This method is a shorthand for:
           openConnection().getInputStream()
      Returns:
      an input stream for reading from the URL connection.
      Throws:
      IOException - if an I/O exception occurs.
      See Also:

    • getContent

      public final Object getContent() throwsIOException
      Gets the contents of this URL. This method is a shorthand for:
           openConnection().getContent()
      Returns:
      the contents of this URL.
      Throws:
      IOException - if an I/O exception occurs.
      See Also:

    • getContent

      public final Object getContent(Class<?>[] classes) throwsIOException
      Gets the contents of this URL. This method is a shorthand for:
           openConnection().getContent(classes)
      Parameters:
      classes - an array of Java types
      Returns:
      the content object of this URL that is the first match of the types specified in the classes array. null if none of the requested types are supported.
      Throws:
      IOException - if an I/O exception occurs.
      Since:
      1.3
      See Also:

    • setURLStreamHandlerFactory

      public static void setURLStreamHandlerFactory(URLStreamHandlerFactory fac)
      Sets an application'sURLStreamHandlerFactory. This method can be called at most once in a given Java Virtual Machine.

      TheURLStreamHandlerFactory instance is used toconstruct a stream protocol handler from a protocol name.

      Parameters:
      fac - the desired factory.
      Throws:
      Error - if the application has already set a factory.
      See Also: