URLConnection can access the attributes of a remote resource.
// Demonstrate URLConnection. import java.io.InputStream; import java.net.URL; import java.net.URLConnection; import java.util.Date; public class Main { public static void main(String args[]) throws Exception { int c;/*from ww w . j av a2 s . c o m*/ URL hp = new URL("http://www.google.com"); URLConnection hpCon = hp.openConnection(); // get date long d = hpCon.getDate(); if (d == 0) System.out.println("No date information."); else System.out.println("Date: " + new Date(d)); // get content type System.out.println("Content-Type: " + hpCon.getContentType()); // get expiration date d = hpCon.getExpiration(); if (d == 0) System.out.println("No expiration information."); else System.out.println("Expires: " + new Date(d)); // get last-modified date d = hpCon.getLastModified(); if (d == 0) System.out.println("No last-modified information."); else System.out.println("Last-Modified: " + new Date(d)); // get content length long len = hpCon.getContentLengthLong(); if (len == -1) System.out.println("Content length unavailable."); else System.out.println("Content-Length: " + len); if (len != 0) { System.out.println("=== Content ==="); InputStream input = hpCon.getInputStream(); while (((c = input.read()) != -1)) { System.out.print((char) c); } input.close(); } else { System.out.println("No content available."); } } }