How to Quickly Check If Url Server Is Available

Check if URL exists or not on Server

You will get Network On Main Thread Exception

Look at NetworkOnMainThreadException

so your method always returns false because of:

   catch (Exception e) {
        e.printStackTrace();
        return false;
    }

quick fix:

public class MainActivity extends Activity {

    @Override
    protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
        super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
        setContentView(R.layout.activity_main);     

        String customURL = "http://www.desicomments.com/dc3/08/273858/273858.jpg";

        MyTask task = new MyTask();
        task.execute(customURL);
    }


    private class MyTask extends AsyncTask<String, Void, Boolean> {

        @Override
        protected void onPreExecute() {

        }

        @Override
        protected Boolean doInBackground(String... params) {

             try {
                    HttpURLConnection.setFollowRedirects(false);
                    HttpURLConnection con =  (HttpURLConnection) new URL(params[0]).openConnection();
                    con.setRequestMethod("HEAD");
                    System.out.println(con.getResponseCode()); 
                    return (con.getResponseCode() == HttpURLConnection.HTTP_OK);
                }
                catch (Exception e) {   
                    e.printStackTrace();    
                    return false;
                }
        }

        @Override
        protected void onPostExecute(Boolean result) {
            boolean bResponse = result;
             if (bResponse==true)
                {
                    Toast.makeText(MainActivity.this, "File exists!", Toast.LENGTH_SHORT).show();      
                }
                else
                {           
                    Toast.makeText(MainActivity.this, "File does not exist!", Toast.LENGTH_SHORT).show();
                }                  
        }           
    }
}

With a ScheduledThreadPoolExecutor:

but remember to shut down it!!

public class MainActivity extends Activity {
     String customURL;
     String msg = "";
    @Override
    protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
        super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
        setContentView(R.layout.activity_main);     

        customURL = "http://www.desicomments.com/dc3/08/273858/273858.jpg";

        final ScheduledThreadPoolExecutor myTimer = new ScheduledThreadPoolExecutor(1);
        myTimer.scheduleAtFixedRate(new Runnable() {

            @Override
            public void run() {

                try {
                    HttpURLConnection.setFollowRedirects(false);
                    HttpURLConnection con =  (HttpURLConnection) new URL(customURL).openConnection();
                    con.setRequestMethod("HEAD");
                    System.out.println(con.getResponseCode()); 

                    if(con.getResponseCode() == HttpURLConnection.HTTP_OK){

                        msg = "File exist!";

                    }else{

                        msg = "File does not exist!";

                    }

                    runOnUiThread(new Runnable() {

                            @Override
                            public void run() {

                                Toast.makeText(MainActivity.this, msg, Toast.LENGTH_SHORT).show();      
                            }
                        });
                }
                catch (Exception e) {   
                    e.printStackTrace();    
                    return;
                }

            }
        }, 0,10000, TimeUnit.MILLISECONDS);
    }

Java - Quickest way to check if URL exists

Try sending a "HEAD" request instead of get request. That should be faster since the response body is not downloaded.

huc.setRequestMethod("HEAD");

Again instead of checking if response status is not 400, check if it is 200. That is check for positive instead of negative. 404,403,402.. all 40x statuses are nearly equivalent to invalid non-existant url.

You may make use of multi-threading to make it even faster.

Check if a URL is reachable using Golang

What is the best way to check if a URL exists in PHP?

You can use get_headers($url)

Example 2 from Manual:

<?php
// By default get_headers uses a GET request to fetch the headers. If you
// want to send a HEAD request instead, you can do so using a stream context:
stream_context_set_default(
    array(
        'http' => array(
            'method' => 'HEAD'
        )
    )
);
print_r(get_headers('http://example.com'));

// gives
Array
(
    [0] => HTTP/1.1 200 OK 
    [Date] => Sat, 29 May 2004 12:28:14 GMT
    [Server] => Apache/1.3.27 (Unix)  (Red-Hat/Linux)
    [Last-Modified] => Wed, 08 Jan 2003 23:11:55 GMT
    [ETag] => "3f80f-1b6-3e1cb03b"
    [Accept-Ranges] => bytes
    [Content-Length] => 438
    [Connection] => close
    [Content-Type] => text/html
)

The first array element will contain the HTTP Response Status code. You have to parse that.

Note that the get_headers function in the example will issue an HTTP HEAD request, which means it will not fetch the body of the URL. This is more efficient than using a GET request which will also return the body.

Also note that by setting a default context, any subsequent calls using an http stream context, will now issue HEAD requests. So make sure to reset the default context to use GET again when done.

PHP also provides the variable $http_response_header

The $http_response_header array is similar to the get_headers() function. When using the HTTP wrapper, $http_response_header will be populated with the HTTP response headers. $http_response_header will be created in the local scope.

If you want to download the content of a remote resource, you don't want to do two requests (one to see if the resource exists and one to fetch it), but just one. In that case, use something like file_get_contents to fetch the content and then inspect the headers from the variable.

Preferred Java way to ping an HTTP URL for availability

Is this any good at all (will it do what I want?)

You can do so. Another feasible way is using java.net.Socket.

public static boolean pingHost(String host, int port, int timeout) {
    try (Socket socket = new Socket()) {
        socket.connect(new InetSocketAddress(host, port), timeout);
        return true;
    } catch (IOException e) {
        return false; // Either timeout or unreachable or failed DNS lookup.
    }
}

There's also the InetAddress#isReachable():

boolean reachable = InetAddress.getByName(hostname).isReachable();

This however doesn't explicitly test port 80. You risk to get false negatives due to a Firewall blocking other ports.

---

Do I have to somehow close the connection?

No, you don't explicitly need. It's handled and pooled under the hoods.

---

I suppose this is a GET request. Is there a way to send HEAD instead?

You can cast the obtained URLConnection to HttpURLConnection and then use setRequestMethod() to set the request method. However, you need to take into account that some poor webapps or homegrown servers may return HTTP 405 error for a HEAD (i.e. not available, not implemented, not allowed) while a GET works perfectly fine. Using GET is more reliable in case you intend to verify links/resources not domains/hosts.

---

Testing the server for availability is not enough in my case, I need to test the URL (the webapp may not be deployed)

Indeed, connecting a host only informs if the host is available, not if the content is available. It can as good happen that a webserver has started without problems, but the webapp failed to deploy during server's start. This will however usually not cause the entire server to go down. You can determine that by checking if the HTTP response code is 200.

HttpURLConnection connection = (HttpURLConnection) new URL(url).openConnection();
connection.setRequestMethod("HEAD");
int responseCode = connection.getResponseCode();
if (responseCode != 200) {
    // Not OK.
}

// < 100 is undetermined.
// 1nn is informal (shouldn't happen on a GET/HEAD)
// 2nn is success
// 3nn is redirect
// 4nn is client error
// 5nn is server error

For more detail about response status codes see RFC 2616 section 10. Calling connect() is by the way not needed if you're determining the response data. It will implicitly connect.

For future reference, here's a complete example in flavor of an utility method, also taking account with timeouts:

/**
 * Pings a HTTP URL. This effectively sends a HEAD request and returns <code>true</code> if the response code is in 
 * the 200-399 range.
 * @param url The HTTP URL to be pinged.
 * @param timeout The timeout in millis for both the connection timeout and the response read timeout. Note that
 * the total timeout is effectively two times the given timeout.
 * @return <code>true</code> if the given HTTP URL has returned response code 200-399 on a HEAD request within the
 * given timeout, otherwise <code>false</code>.
 */
public static boolean pingURL(String url, int timeout) {
    url = url.replaceFirst("^https", "http"); // Otherwise an exception may be thrown on invalid SSL certificates.

    try {
        HttpURLConnection connection = (HttpURLConnection) new URL(url).openConnection();
        connection.setConnectTimeout(timeout);
        connection.setReadTimeout(timeout);
        connection.setRequestMethod("HEAD");
        int responseCode = connection.getResponseCode();
        return (200 <= responseCode && responseCode <= 399);
    } catch (IOException exception) {
        return false;
    }
}

How to check if URL is available or not using javascript

This is what I use to check if a URL exists:

function UrlExists(url, cb) {
    jQuery.ajax({
        url: url,
        dataType: 'text',
        type: 'GET',
        complete: function (xhr) {
            if (typeof cb === 'function')
                cb.apply(this, [xhr.status]);
        }
    });
}

UrlExists('-- Insert Url Here --', function (status) {
    if (status === 200) {
        // Execute code if successful
    } else if (status === 404) {
        // Execute code if not successful
    } else {
        // Execute code if status doesn't match above
    }
});

There are many status codes so you can change out the 404 to whatever code you want to match or just put the code you want to execute in the last else case and that code will execute if the status does not match any of the requested status codes.

How can I check if a URL exists via PHP?

Here:

$file = 'http://www.example.com/somefile.jpg';
$file_headers = @get_headers($file);
if(!$file_headers || $file_headers[0] == 'HTTP/1.1 404 Not Found') {
    $exists = false;
}
else {
    $exists = true;
}

From here and right below the above post, there's a curl solution:

function url_exists($url) {
    return curl_init($url) !== false;
}

C# How can I check if a URL exists/is valid?

You could issue a "HEAD" request rather than a "GET"?
So to test a URL without the cost of downloading the content:

// using MyClient from linked post
using(var client = new MyClient()) {
    client.HeadOnly = true;
    // fine, no content downloaded
    string s1 = client.DownloadString("http://google.com");
    // throws 404
    string s2 = client.DownloadString("http://google.com/silly");
}

You would try/catch around the DownloadString to check for errors; no error? It exists...

---

With C# 2.0 (VS2005):

private bool headOnly;
public bool HeadOnly {
    get {return headOnly;}
    set {headOnly = value;}
}

and

using(WebClient client = new MyClient())
{
    // code as before
}

---

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