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

Question

I am making a simple program in visual c# 2005 that looks up a stock symbol on Yahoo! Finance, downloads the historical data, and then plots the price history for the specified ticker symbol.

I know the exact URL that I need to acquire the data, and if the user inputs an existing ticker symbol (or at least one with data on Yahoo! Finance) it works perfectly fine. However, I have a run-time error if the user makes up a ticker symbol, as the program tries to pull data from a non-existent web page.

I am using the WebClient class, and using the DownloadString function. I looked through all the other member functions of the WebClient class, but didn't see anything I could use to test a URL.

How can I do this?

Answer 1

You could issue a "HEAD" request rather than a "GET"?

(edit) - lol! Looks like I've done this before!; changed to wiki to avoid accusations of rep-garnering. 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
}

Answer 2

Web servers respond with a HTTP status code indicating the outcome of the request e.g. 200 (sometimes 202) means success, 404 - not found etc (see here). Assuming the server address part of the URL is correct and you are not getting a socket timeout, the exception is most likely telling you the HTTP status code was other than 200. I would suggest checking the class of the exception and seeing if the exception carries the HTTP status code.

IIRC - The call in question throws a WebException or a descendant. Check the class name to see which one and wrap the call in a try block to trap the condition.

Answer 3

If I understand your question correctly, you could use a small method like this to give you the results of your URL test:

WebRequest webRequest = WebRequest.Create(url);  
WebResponse webResponse;
try 
{
  webResponse = webRequest.GetResponse();
}
catch //If exception thrown then couldn't get response from address
{
  return 0;
} 
return 1;

You could wrap the above code in a method and use it to perform validation. I hope this answers the question you were asking.

Answer 4

Here is another implementation of this solution:

using System.Net;

///
/// Checks the file exists or not.
///
/// The URL of the remote file.
/// True : If the file exits, False if file not exists
private bool RemoteFileExists(string url)
{
    try
    {
        //Creating the HttpWebRequest
        HttpWebRequest request = WebRequest.Create(url) as HttpWebRequest;
        //Setting the Request method HEAD, you can also use GET too.
        request.Method = "HEAD";
        //Getting the Web Response.
        HttpWebResponse response = request.GetResponse() as HttpWebResponse;
        //Returns TURE if the Status code == 200
        return (response.StatusCode == HttpStatusCode.OK);
    }
    catch
    {
        //Any exception will returns false.
        return false;
    }
}

From: http://www.dotnetthoughts.net/2009/10/14/how-to-check-remote-file-exists-using-c/