InputStream from a URL

Question

How do I get an InputStream from a URL?

for example, I want to take the file at the url wwww.somewebsite.com/a.txt and read it as an InputStream in Java

Answer 1

(a) wwww.somewebsite.com/a.txt isn't a 'file URL'. It isn't a URL at all. If you put http:// on the front of it it would be an HTTP URL, which is clearly what you intend here.

(b) FileInputStream is for files, not URLs.

(c) The way to get an input stream from any URL is via URL.openStream(), or URL.getConnection().getInputStream(), which is equivalent but you might have other reasons to get the URLConnection and play with it first.