FileTest.exists? over HTTP

Ruby
#1

HI

I would like to test for the existence of a file over HTTP. I have tried
various combinations of File.stat and FileTest.exists? with no results.

For example (image.jpg exists)

if FileTest.exists?(“http://domain.com/image.jpg”)
puts “found file”
end

does not print found file even though the file exists

What am I doing wrong ?

Thanks in Advance

#2

On Aug 15, 2006, at 2:16 PM, Neil Charlton wrote:

puts "found file"

end

does not print found file even though the file exists

What am I doing wrong ?

As Kirk mentioned, the only transparent url support is with open-uri.
Also File.exists? does not really make sense for a url. A given url
does not necessarily point to a real file. Does it exist if you get a
response code of 200? What about 302? What about 404? Sure the
webserver says it doesn’t exist, but you do get some content back
usually.

#3

On Wed, 16 Aug 2006, Neil Charlton wrote:

does not print found file even though the file exists

What am I doing wrong ?

Using FileTest.exists?() for an HTTP operation.

By default, Ruby doesn’t try to make file operations transparently work
over HTTP, except for the availability of the open-uri in the ruby core,
which lets one use Kernel::open() to open http, https, and ftp URIs.

The easiest way, I think, to get the simple effect you are looking for
is
to use open-uri.

require ‘open-uri’
begin
open(“http://domain.com/image.jpg”)
rescue OpenURI::HTTPError

It couldn’t be accessed, so do something.

end

Kirk H.