using System.Net;

///
/// Checks the file exists or not.
///
/// The URL of the remote file.
/// True : If the file exits, False if file not exists
private bool RemoteFileExists(string url)
{
    try
    {
        //Creating the HttpWebRequest
        HttpWebRequest request = WebRequest.Create(url) as HttpWebRequest;
        //Setting the Request method HEAD, you can also use GET too.
        request.Method = "HEAD";
        //Getting the Web Response.
        HttpWebResponse response = request.GetResponse() as HttpWebResponse;
        //Returns TURE if the Status code == 200
        return (response.StatusCode == HttpStatusCode.OK);
    }
    catch
    {
        //Any exception will returns false.
        return false;
    }
}

using System.Net;

///
/// Checks the file exists or not.
///
/// The URL of the remote file.
/// True : If the file exits, False if file not exists
private bool RemoteFileExists(string url)
{
    bool result = false;
    using (WebClient client = new WebClient())
    {
        try
        {
            Stream stream = client.OpenRead(url);
            if (stream != null)
            {
                result = true;
            }
            else
            {
                result = false;
            }
        }
        catch
        {
            //Any exception will returns false.
            result = false;
        }
    }
    return result;
}

3 Responses to “How to check remote file exists using C#”

1. 

   This one really helped me a lot.I’m just wondering Is it possible to use File.Exists() instead of web request? Seems like you can’t reach the remote server with that.

   Comment by Utku Feruz — August 22, 2011 @ 4:16 pm

2. 

   No, you can’t use File.Exists it will work on local file system only.

   Comment by Anuraj P — August 23, 2011 @ 5:02 am

3. 

   First, thanks for your post. It really helped me.

   You can imagine a use case where you have 100s or 1000s of URLs that you want to check. For me it is 700+ image files, but it could be FAQs, product landing pages, or any other case where the URLs can be generated from a database query or file system script.

   What I did was put all of my URLs into a text file (MyLinks.txt). It looks like this:

   http://foo.org/foo/Images/Normal/1598_1_CR.jpg
   http://foo.org/foo//Images/Normal/2.jpg
   http://foo.org/foo/Images/Normal/31796.2001.jpg
   http://foo.org/foo/Images/Normal/4.2001.jpg
   etc….

   I built a console app that goes through each URL in the file then check it with the code in this blog. The entire thing is below. I am amazed that I couldn’t find an example of this and I was going to make a CodeProject articlee out of it, but it seems more appropriate to put it here. Thanks again.

   Steve

   PS, One thing that is really important to do is add “response.Close()” which I did below. It is also a good idea to put in a request.Timeout value.

   using System;
   using System.Net;
   using System.IO;

   namespace LinkChecker
   {
   class Program
   {
   static void Main(string[] args)
   {

   string[] m_urls = File.ReadAllLines(@”C:\LinkChecker\MyLinks.txt”);

   //string[] m_urls = new string[] { m_arraystring.ToString() };

   StreamWriter m_results = new StreamWriter(@”C:\LinkChecker\LinkCheckerResults.txt”, true);

   // Print length of each row
   for (int i = 0; i < m_urls.Length; i++)
   {
   Console.WriteLine("Status of URL " + m_urls[i].ToString() + " is " + RemoteFileExists(m_urls[i]));
   m_results.WriteLine("Status of URL " + m_urls[i].ToString() + " is " + RemoteFileExists(m_urls[i]));
   m_results.Flush();
   }

   }

   ///
   /// Checks the file exists or not.
   ///
   /// The URL of the remote file.
   /// True : If the file exits, False if file not exists
   public static bool RemoteFileExists(string url)
   {
   try
   {
   //Creating the HttpWebRequest
   HttpWebRequest request = WebRequest.Create(url) as HttpWebRequest;
   //Setting the Request method HEAD, you can also use GET too.
   request.Method = "HEAD";
   request.Timeout = 10000;
   //Getting the Web Response.
   HttpWebResponse response = request.GetResponse() as HttpWebResponse;
   response.Close();
   //Returns TURE if the Status code == 200
   return (response.StatusCode == HttpStatusCode.OK);

   }
   catch
   {
   //Any exception will returns false.
   return false;
   }
   }

   }

   Comment by SAM — December 13, 2011 @ 3:04 am

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