Parsing an HTML document. URL format problem

[Daniel Cote]

I'm parsing HTML pages from a web site. I use this piece of code:

URL url = new URL(urlStr);
content = url.openStream();

'urlStr' is String type and I mount it before. I've discovered that I got and HTTP 400 error (malformed url exception I think) when I use spaces inside the URL, i.e:

http://www.yahoo.es?section=user mail&index=5

I've changed the code to change spaces by '%20':

urlStr = StringUtils.replace(urlStr," ","%20");
URL url = new URL(urlStr);
content = url.openStream();

and now works fine. My question is if there's a way (method, class...) that could validate URL formats and change invalid chars like spaces (in this case) to understandable chars and format to do the 'url.openStream()' in any case.

Thanks in advance.

[Paul Clapham]

Yes. The class java.net.URLEncoder exists to do precisely that. Remember to encode only the part of the URL after the ? character.

[Daniel Cote]

Ok, thanks for your help