Linking to an external URL in Javadoc?

Question

Something like:

/**
 * See {@linktourl http://google.com}
 */

Answer 1

Taken from the javadoc spec

@see <a href="URL#value">label</a> : Adds a link as defined by URL#value. The URL#value is a relative or absolute URL. The Javadoc tool distinguishes this from other cases by looking for a less-than symbol (<) as the first character.

For example : @see <a href="http://www.google.com">Google</a>

Answer 2

Hard to find a clear answer from the Oracle site. The following is from javax.ws.rs.core.HttpHeaders.java:

/**
 * See {@link <a href="http://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2616/rfc2616-sec14.html#sec14.1">HTTP/1.1 documentation</a>}.
 */
public static final String ACCEPT = "Accept";

/**
 * See {@link <a href="http://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2616/rfc2616-sec14.html#sec14.2">HTTP/1.1 documentation</a>}.
 */
public static final String ACCEPT_CHARSET = "Accept-Charset";

Answer 3

This creates a "See Also" heading containing the link, i.e.:

/**
 * @see <a href="http://google.com">http://google.com</a>
 */

will render as:

See Also:
           http://google.com

whereas this:

/**
 * See <a href="http://google.com">http://google.com</a>
 */

will create an in-line link:

See http://google.com

Answer 4

Javadocs don't offer any special tools for external links, so you should just use standard html:

See <a href="http://groversmill.com/">Grover's Mill</a> for a history of the
Martian invasion.

or

@see <a href="http://groversmill.com/">Grover's Mill</a> for a history of 
the Martian invasion.

Don't use {@link ...} or {@linkplain ...} because these are for links to the javadocs of other classes and methods.