Verify Url Exists

I recently was working on a web site that displayed a lot of images. The image details are stored separately from the images, so it is possible that when searching images to be displayed, that the actual image no longer exists. So I needed some code to validate that the image was actually present. The web site is an ASP.NET application and searched on StackOverflow and found some really good suggestions on how to do this with C#

• I want to check whether the file in an url entered exists or not in .net
• How can I check if an Image exists at http://someurl/myimage.jpg in C#/ASP.NET

So I took the best of both of these posts and created the following helper method.

	public static bool UrlExists(string url)
	{
	try
	{
	var request = WebRequest.Create(url) as HttpWebRequest;
	if (request == null) return false;
	request.Method = "HEAD";
	using (var response = (HttpWebResponse)request.GetResponse())
	{
	return response.StatusCode == HttpStatusCode.OK;
	}
	}
	catch (UriFormatException)
	{
	//Invalid Url
	return false;
	}
	catch (WebException)
	{
	//Unable to access url
	return false;
	}
	}

view raw UrlExists.cs hosted with ❤ by GitHub

Please feel free to modify this if you find any issues or problems with. 

Stack Overflow Questions in eBook Format

Yesterday, I saw a tweet by Joel Spolsky that contained a link to StackOverflow questions in  eBook format. After checking out the list of topics that had been compiled and selecting the ASP.NET topic. It only took a little fiddling with how to get these into my Kindle Reader App for Mac and Android and I now have a very nice reference for some great questions that have been asked on StackOverflow over the past few years.  Please go check them out, as they are a great reference for 50 different topics. According to Greg Hegwill's Live Journal Entry about the process he uses, it takes a while to generate all of these ebooks. If you find them useful, please be sure to let Greg know and show him some appreciation.