# How to validate the URL for a file

**URL:** <https://discourse.julialang.org/t/how-to-validate-the-url-for-a-file/4757>\
**Category:** General Usage\
**Tags:** question\
**Created:** [July 10, 2017, 12:44pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/how-to-validate-the-url-for-a-file/4757 "2017-07-10T12:44:26Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![pochoi](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/pochoi/32/3742_2.png) [@pochoi](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/pochoi)\
**Post date:** [July 10, 2017, 12:44pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/how-to-validate-the-url-for-a-file/4757/1 "2017-07-10T12:44:26Z")

</div>

Suppose I have a file with the following url I need to download it in Julia  
`ftp://hello.com/world.zip`.

How to validate the URL before downloading it?

Motivations of my question:

1. The silly servers in my workspace sometime cannot access remote ftp files, probably because of firewall. Just want to be informed when files are unavailable.
2. I guess it is system specific because of different download commands. Is there any robust method for it?