Problem verifying if a given URL exists

Question

Hi,
I have migrated from Java 1.2.2 to 1.3 (Windows NT version), and a big problem has arosen.
I used to verify if a given URL existed with this piece of code:
try {
URL url = new URL(path);
url.openStream();
} catch (Exceptions ....) {}
But right now, I get sometimes a "FileNotFoundException" when the file DOES EXIST.
Is this possible? It only occurs sometimes. Why?
I also tried this, but this piece of code never throws an exception:
URLConnection conn = url.openConnection();
conn.connect();
Thanks.

Answer 1

I had the same problem and solved it with this:
  public boolean exists(URL url) {
  try {
    HttpURLConnection con = (HttpURLConnection)url.openConnection();
    con.connect();
    int responseCode = con.getResponseCode();
    con.disconnect();
    return responseCode == HttpURLConnection.HTTP_NOT_FOUND;
  catch (IOException e) {
    e.printStackTrace();
    return false;
  }The code comes from these threads:
http://forum.java.sun.com/thread.jsp?forum=31&thread=206582
http://forum.java.sun.com/thread.jsp?forum=31&thread=249739