File problem - checking the existence of a remote file

Question

I have absolute paths to several text files from a ftp server (which don't require any
authentication and can be accessed over the internet).
I am trying to write a Java method that can check any of the above absolute ftp file
paths and returns true/false depending on whether the file exists/doesn't exist.
I tried somewhat this way:
File current_file = new File(absolute_file_path);
// absolute_file_path comes as a parameter
// e.g. "ftp://ftp.test.com/myfile.txt"
if(current_file.exists()) return true;
// if the file exists return true
return false;
// otherwise return false
Then I ran the program in my local machine which has internet access. But it returned
false for all the files (even if the file exists). Seems like it's unable to get those
files.
Could someone please tell me how can I rewrite my program so that it can be executed
locally.
Thanks,
SQ

Answer 1

Does anyone know if URL and URLConnection support FTP
directly? I can imagine downloads being simple, but
how about uploads? Never tried with FTP myself.Yes, they do. But uploads don't work properly with Java 1.3. (Note: I only know this because I've seen questions asked about it here, not from personal experience.) If I wanted to know whether a certain file existed on an FTP server, I would use an FTP client that could tell me that. Such as the Jakarta Commons/Net FTP client.