How to verify if a String in Java is a valid URL

Question

How can I check if a string is a URL in Java?

Answer 1

If you program in Android, you could use android.webkit.URLUtil to test.

URLUtil.isHttpUrl(url)
URLUtil.isHttpsUrl(url)

Hope it would be helpful.

Answer 2

For Android just add this line:

boolean isValid = URLUtil.isValidUrl( "your.uri" );

Answer 3

Here you go:

public static boolean isValidURL(String urlString)
{
    try
    {
        URL url = new URL(urlString);
        url.toURI();
        return true;
    } catch (Exception exception)
    {
        return false;
    }
}

Answer 4

For Spring Framework users. There is: org.springframework.util.ResourceUtils#isUrl

E.g

ResourceUtils.isUrl("https://stackoverflow.com/");

Answer 5

You can use UrlValidator from commons-validator. It will save you from writing code where the logic flow is guided by caching an exception, which is generally considered a bad practice. In this case, however, I think it's fine to do as others suggested, if you move this functionality to an utility method called isValidUrl(..)

Answer 6

Complementing Bozho answer, to go more practical:

1. Download apache commons package and uncompress it.
2. Include commons-validator-1.4.0.jar in your java build path.

3. Test it with this sample code (reference):

   //...your imports
   
   import org.apache.commons.validator.routines.*; // Import routines package!
   
   public static void main(String[] args){
   
   // Get an UrlValidator
   UrlValidator defaultValidator = new UrlValidator(); // default schemes
   if (defaultValidator.isValid("http://www.apache.org")) {
       System.out.println("valid");
   }
   if (!defaultValidator.isValid("http//www.oops.com")) {
       System.out.println("INvalid");
   }
   
   // Get an UrlValidator with custom schemes
   String[] customSchemes = { "sftp", "scp", "https" };
   UrlValidator customValidator = new UrlValidator(customSchemes);
   if (!customValidator.isValid("http://www.apache.org")) {
       System.out.println("valid");
   }
   
   // Get an UrlValidator that allows double slashes in the path
   UrlValidator doubleSlashValidator = new UrlValidator(UrlValidator.ALLOW_2_SLASHES);
   if (doubleSlashValidator.isValid("http://www.apache.org//projects")) {
       System.out.println("INvalid");
   }
   

4. Run/Debug