java - InputStream from a URL

Question

How do I get an InputStream from a URL?

for example, I want to take the file at the url wwww.somewebsite.com/a.txt and read it as an InputStream in Java, through a servlet.

I've tried

InputStream is = new FileInputStream("wwww.somewebsite.com/a.txt");

but what I got was an error:

java.io.FileNotFoundException

Answer 1

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