List all the directories on a given url on remote server

Question

Could any body help me in Listing the files on a given URL directory on a remote server using Java.
I have done this:
File dir = new File("http://www.abc.com/web/data/sos/zip/tm/");
String[] children = dir.list();
if (children == null) {
out.println("CANNOT FIND ANY FILE");    // IT IS ALWAYS GOING IN THIS CONDITION AND FAILING THEREFORE.
// Either dir does not exist or is not a directory
} else {
for (int i=0; i<children.length; i++) {
// Get filename of file or directory
String filename = children;
out.println("HI");

Answer 1

kus wrote:
There is a solution but not a very portable one, i.e. you can't use it to get a listing of files from any server that you happen to look at. But here are the steps you need to take:
1. Use a browser (firefox, opera, etc.) to view the file listing and then view the source.
2. Duplicate the retrieval of data from the given URL in Java (new URL(...), etc.)
3. Parse the HTTP response and/or the HTML that the server returns to you to extract what you need.
Step #3 is the biggest piece of work and the format you need to parse will depend on whatever the remote server hands to you. It's intended for humans, not machines; every server can decide how to format this and it even depends on the server's configuration how this data is presented to you. In any case, it's entirely up to you to make sense of whatever the server happens to throw back at you and if the server happens to present you a nice, picturesque page rather than a listing of files then your completely out of luck.He actually wasn't talking about http at all, so most of this thread has been a wild goose chase.