Reading a remote file using Java

I am looking for an easy way to get files that are situated on a remote server. For this I created a local ftp server on my Windows XP, and now I am trying to give my test applet the following address:

try
{
    uri = new URI("ftp://localhost/myTest/test.mid");
    File midiFile = new File(uri);
}
catch (Exception ex)
{
}

and of course I receive the following error:

URI scheme is not “file”

I’ve been trying some other ways to get the file, they don’t seem to work. How should I do it? (I am also keen to perform an HTTP request)

Answer

You can’t do this out of the box with ftp.

If your file is on http, you could do something similar to:

URL url = new URL("http://q.com/test.mid");
InputStream is = url.openStream();
// Read from is

If you want to use a library for doing FTP, you should check out Apache Commons Net