Http redirection method

Question

im making a program that connects to a certain web site, the pages in that website redirect me several times (each one is a sql validation, so i need to go through everyone of this pages).
The thing is i have read that, once u give a URL object a value, later you cant assign that same URL object another value. So i was thinking of making a method, something like this (took away all the try/catch for simplicity reading):
private InputStream conectar(String nuevaURL){
   URL newURL = null;
   URLConnection newConnection = null;
   newURL = new URL(nuevaURL);
   newConnection = newURL.openConnection();
   return newConnection.getInputStream();
}This method would return an InputStream so in the caller i would use a BufferedReader to process the information from the URL, parse the new redirection URL and call again this method to receive the new content from the new URL.
The thing is i dont know if this is valid cause of the variables scope, so every time it gets in here it can assign a new url to the newURL variable. Also i dont know if i should close the BufferedReader every time i finish processing each of the contents URL and before calling this method to fetch the new content.
Any help is greatly appreciated :)
KodiaK

Answer 1

Well, if you want the new URL that the redirection provides, it's easiest to grab it from the connection as an HTTP header. (the header's name is "Location") I don't know if it's possible to grab headers via the input stream, and even if it were it would seem like a real pain.
But actually, HttpURLConnection provides setFollowRedirects and getFollowRedirects methods. You shouldn't have to handle this yourself at all.
If you were to write something to follow redirects by hand, I'd suggest using recursion. Something like this (using pseudo-code where I can't recall the exact API):
private InputStream conectar(String nuevaURL) {
    URL newURL = new URL(nuevaURL);
    HttpURLConnection huc = newURL.getConnection();
    if (huc.getStatus() > 299 && huc.getStatus() < 400) {
        String nextURL = huc.getHeader("Location");
        return conectar(nextURL);
    return huc.getInputStream();
}But like I said, just use the redirect-following functionality already in the API.