determine if a string is absolute URL or relative

Question

Given a string, how do I determine if it is absolute URL or relative URL in Java? I tried the following code:

private boolean isAbsoluteURL(String urlString)
    {
        boolean result = false;
        try
        {
            URL url = new URL(urlString);
            String protocol = url.getProtocol();
            if (protocol != null && protocol.trim().length() > 0)
                result = true;
        }
        catch (MalformedURLException e)
        {
            return false;
        }
        return result;
    }

The problem is that all relative URLs are throwing the MalformedURLException as there is no protocol defined (example: www.google.com and /questions/ask).

Answer 1

How about:

final URI u = new URI("http://www.anigota.com/start");
// URI u = new URI("/works/with/me/too");
// URI u = new URI("/can/../do/./more/../sophis?ticated=stuff+too");

if(u.isAbsolute())
{
  System.out.println("Yes, i am absolute!");
}
else
{
  System.out.println("Ohh noes, it's a relative URI!");
}

see for details: http://docs.oracle.com/javase/7/docs/api/java/net/URI.html

HTH

Answer 2

This is a snippet I use to ensure links are absolute:

 private String ensureAbsoluteURL(String base, String maybeRelative) {
    if (maybeRelative.startsWith("http")) {
        return maybeRelative;
    } else {
        try {
           return new URL(new URL(base), maybeRelative).toExternalForm();
        } catch (MalformedURLException e) {
           // do something
        }
    }
}

Answer 3

I made this

public static String processUrl(String urlToProcess, String grantedNormalUrl){
    if (urlToProcess.startsWith("//")){
        urlToProcess = checkUrlStartsWithProtocol(urlToProcess);
        return urlToProcess;
    }

    if (!isAbsolute(urlToProcess)){
        String rootPage = extractRootPage(grantedNormalUrl);
        boolean domainEndsWithSlash = rootPage.endsWith("/");
        boolean urlStartsWithSlash = urlToProcess.startsWith("/");
        if (domainEndsWithSlash && urlStartsWithSlash){
            rootPage = rootPage.substring(0, rootPage.length() - 1); // exclude /
        }
        urlToProcess = rootPage + (!(domainEndsWithSlash || urlStartsWithSlash) ? "/" : "") + urlToProcess;
    }

    return urlToProcess;
}

public static boolean isAbsolute(String url){
    if (url.startsWith("//")) { // //www.domen.com/start
        return true;
    }

    if (url.startsWith("/")){ // /somePage.html
        return false;
    }

    boolean result = false;

    try {
        URI uri = new URI(url);
        result = uri.isAbsolute();
    } catch (URISyntaxException e) {
        e.printStackTrace();
    }

    return result;
}

public static String checkUrlStartsWithProtocol(String url) {
    if (!url.startsWith("http://") && !url.startsWith("https://")) {
        StringBuilder prefixBuilder = new StringBuilder();
        prefixBuilder.append("http:");
        if (!url.startsWith("//")) {
            prefixBuilder.append("//");
        }
        url = prefixBuilder.toString() + url;
    }
    return url;
}

public static String extractRootPage(String urlString) {
    int ignoreSlashes = 0;
    if (urlString.startsWith("http://") || urlString.startsWith("https://")) {
        ignoreSlashes = 2;
    }
    int endPosition = urlString.length();
    for (int i = 0; i < urlString.length(); i++) {
        if (urlString.charAt(i) == '/') {
            if (ignoreSlashes == 0) {
                endPosition = i; //substring exclude /
                break;
            } else {
                ignoreSlashes--;
            }
        }
    }
    return checkUrlStartsWithProtocol(urlString.substring(0, endPosition));
}

Answer 4

As I said i my comment, you have to normalize the URL, before checking it, and that normalization depends on your application, since www.google.com is not an absolute URL. Here is an example code, which can be used to check URLs to be absolute:

import java.net.URL;

public class Test {
  public static void main(String [] args) throws Exception {
    String [] urls = {"www.google.com",
                      "http://www.google.com",
                      "/search",
                      "file:/dir/file",
                      "file://localhost/dir/file",
                      "file:///dir/file"};

    for(String url:urls) {
      System.out.println("`" + url + "' is " + 
                          (isAbsoluteURL(url)?"absolute":"relative"));
    }
  }

  public static boolean isAbsoluteURL(String url)
                          throws java.net.MalformedURLException {
    final URL baseHTTP = new URL("http://example.com");
    final URL baseFILE = new URL("file:///");
    URL frelative = new URL(baseFILE, url);
    URL hrelative = new URL(baseHTTP, url);
    System.err.println("DEBUG: file URL: " + frelative.toString());
    System.err.println("DEBUG: http URL: " + hrelative.toString());
    return frelative.equals(hrelative);
  }
}

running:

~$ java Test 2>/dev/null
`www.google.com' is relative
`http://www.google.com' is absolute
`/search' is relative
`file:/dir/file' is absolute
`file://localhost/dir/file' is absolute
`file:///dir/file' is absolute