Reading Contents of URL with Spaces in its Path (+other odd characters)

Question

Hi, I am looking for a way to get the contents of a webpage that has a pathname with odd characters in it. Here is my "contents reader":
    public static String getURLContents(URL u){
        try {
            Scanner scan = new Scanner((InputStream)u.getContent());
            String output = "";
            while (scan.hasNextLine()) {
                output += scan.nextLine()+"\n";
            return output;
        } catch (Exception ex) {
            System.out.println(ex);
            return null;
    }I have here selected exception output from two tests on the same URL, which has spaces. First, nicely formatted spaces (" "->%20)
java.io.FileNotFoundException: http://www.publichealthalert.org/articles/tinagarcia/jemsek%20part%201.htm
and Secondly, raw spaces:
java.io.IOException: Server returned HTTP response code: 400 for URL: http://www.publichealthalert.org/articles/tinagarcia/jemsek part 1.htm
The second example is obvious - there's spaces, and that's not the right way of doing things. But what's going on in the first example??
Thank you kindly,
K
Edited by: nixxlmai on Jun 8, 2009 11:56 AM

Answer 1

nixxlmai wrote:
java.io.FileNotFoundException: http://www.publichealthalert.org/articles/tinagarcia/jemsek%20part%201.htm
But what's going on in the first example??Do you insinuate that it works when there aren't any spaces in the URL? Have you actually tested an URL without any spaces?
This exception merely means that the URL itsn't reachable on the given domain. It's actually a 404 error.