URL.getContent() method

Question

When I get the class name of the object I'm getting back from the call to URL.getContent(), the object's class name is:
sun.net.www.protocol.http.HttpURLConnection$HttpInputStream
I originally just ignored the part after the $ character, and just assumed it was a:
sun.net.www.protocol.http.HttpURLConnection
object, but a class cast exception is thrown when I try to cast this object to java.net.HttpURLConnection (which extends:
sun.net.www.protocol.http.HttpURLConnection
Does $ followed by the HttpInputStream indicate that HttpInputStream is an inner class of:
sun.net.www.protocol.http.HttpURLConnection
Could someone tell me how to use this object that is being returned to me.
Thanks,
Tim

Answer 1

You can cast it to an InputStream. Here is a complete program that will read a file from the specified url:
import java.io.BufferedReader;
import java.io.InputStreamReader;
import java.io.InputStream;
import java.io.IOException;
import java.net.MalformedURLException;
import java.net.URL;
import java.net.HttpURLConnection;
public class URLTester
     private final static String PROTOCOL = "http://";
     public static void main(String args[])
          if ( args.length != 1 )
               System.out.println("Usage: java URLTester <url>");
               System.exit(-1);
          String urlString = args[0];
          try
               URL url = new URL(PROTOCOL + urlString);
               InputStream is = (InputStream)url.getContent();
               InputStreamReader isr = new InputStreamReader( is );
               BufferedReader in = new BufferedReader( isr );
               String line;
               while ( (line = in.readLine() ) != null )
                    System.out.println( line );
               in.close();
          catch(IOException e)
               System.out.println( e );