Check whether externam URL is valid?

Rails
1

Hey,

I have users entering URLs into my app, is there anyway in which I can
check to see if the URLs actually point to something before saving the
user input? Maybe a kind of ‘ping’-action that returns true on success?

(btw: does anyone of a tentative release date for Rails1.1? I’ve been
slobbering all over my RailsRecipes book and I can’t wait! Also, Scott
Raymond’s compiled a list of awesome stuff that’ll be incorporated into
the next release. . . link on LoudThinking.Com)

Lots of Thanks,
Gustav
[email protected]

2

mmm…Externam should read External :slight_smile: 'suppose you noticed.

Thanks,
Gustav

3

Net::HTTP looks like your best shot.

require ‘net/http’
Net::HTTP.start(‘www.something.com’) do |http|
response = http.get(‘/index.html’)
p response.code
end

Check acceptable response codes here: HTTP - Hypertext Transfer Protocol Overview
rfc2616/rfc2616-sec10.html

-John

–
John S.
Computing Staff - Webmaster
Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics
University of California, Santa Barbara
[email protected]
(805) 893-6307

4

Hey John,

That only works for valid URL’s. It doesn’t alert you if the URL isn’t
there. I’m not sure how to check that?

I’ve tried your code with a check on the response.

unless response == ‘200’
p ‘Site is down’
else
p ‘Found it!’
end

I get a “SocketError: getaddrinfo: No address associated with
nodename”, which isn’t checkable to my knowledge.

Any ideas?
Thanks,
Clint