determine if a string is absolute URL or relative URL in java

Question

Given a string, how do I determine if it is an absolute URL or a 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 (www.google.com or /questions/ask). are throwing a MalformedURLException because there is no protocol defined.

Answer 1

How about this:

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!");
}

More info here.

Answer 2

As I said in in 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);
  }
}

Output:

~$ 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