InputStream from a URL

Question

Use java.net.URL#openStream() with a proper URL (including the protocol!). E.g.

InputStream input = new URL("http://www.somewebsite.com/a.txt").openStream();
// ...

See also:

• Using java.net.URLConnection to fire and handle HTTP requests

Try:

final InputStream is = new URL("http://wwww.somewebsite.com/a.txt").openStream();

(a) wwww.somewebsite.com/a.txt isn't a 'file URL'. It isn't a URL at all. If you put http:// on the front of it it would be an HTTP URL, which is clearly what you intend here.

(b) FileInputStream is for files, not URLs.

(c) The way to get an input stream from any URL is via URL.openStream(), or URL.getConnection().getInputStream(), which is equivalent but you might have other reasons to get the URLConnection and play with it first.

Your original code uses FileInputStream, which is for accessing file system hosted files.

The constructor you used will attempt to locate a file named a.txt in the www.somewebsite.com subfolder of the current working directory (the value of system property user.dir). The name you provide is resolved to a file using the File class.

URL objects are the generic way to solve this. You can use URLs to access local files but also network hosted resources. The URL class supports the file:// protocol besides http:// or https:// so you're good to go.