How to download and save a file from Internet using Java?

Question

There is an online file (such as http://www.example.com/information.asp) I need to grab and save to a directory. I know there are several methods for grabbing a

Answer 1

There is an issue with simple usage of:

org.apache.commons.io.FileUtils.copyURLToFile(URL, File) 

if you need to download and save very large files, or in general if you need automatic retries in case connection is dropped.

What I suggest in such cases is Apache HttpClient along with org.apache.commons.io.FileUtils. For example:

GetMethod method = new GetMethod(resource_url);
try {
    int statusCode = client.executeMethod(method);
    if (statusCode != HttpStatus.SC_OK) {
        logger.error("Get method failed: " + method.getStatusLine());
    }       
    org.apache.commons.io.FileUtils.copyInputStreamToFile(
        method.getResponseBodyAsStream(), new File(resource_file));
    } catch (HttpException e) {
        e.printStackTrace();
    } catch (IOException e) {
        e.printStackTrace();
    } finally {
    method.releaseConnection();
}