How to deal with the URISyntaxException

I got this error message :

java.net.URISyntaxException: Illegal character in query at index 31: http://finance.yahoo.com/q/h?s=^IXIC

My_Url = http://finance.yahoo.com/q/h?s=^IXIC

When I copied it into a browser address field, it showed the correct page, it's a valid URL, but I can't parse it with this : new URI(My_Url)

I tried : My_Url=My_Url.replace("^","\\^"), but 

<1> It won't be the url I need
<2> It doesn't work either

How to handle this ?

Frank

From stackoverflow

• Use "%"-encoding for the "^" character, viz. http://finance.yahoo.com/q/h?s=%5EIXIC

• You need to encode the URI to replace illegal characters with legal encoded characters. If you first make a URL (so you don't have to do the parsing yourself) and then make a URI using the four-argument constructor, then the constructor will do the encoding for you.

  import java.net.*;
  
  public class Test {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
      String myURL = "http://finance.yahoo.com/q/h?s=^IXIC";
      try {
        URL url = new URL(myURL);
        URI uri = new URI(url.getProtocol(), url.getHost(), url.getPath(), url.getQuery(), null);
        System.out.println("URI " + uri.toString() + " is OK");
      } catch (MalformedURLException e) {
        System.out.println("URL " + myURL + " is a malformed URL");
      } catch (URISyntaxException e) {
        System.out.println("URI " + myURL + " is a malformed URL");
      }
    }
  }
  

• You have to encode your parameters.

  Something like this will do:

  import java.net.*;
  import java.io.*;
  
  public class EncodeParameter { 
  
      public static void main( String [] args ) throws URISyntaxException ,
                                           UnsupportedEncodingException   { 
  
          String myQuery = "^IXIC";
  
          URI uri = new URI( String.format( 
                             "http://finance.yahoo.com/q/h?s=%s", 
                             URLEncoder.encode( myQuery , "UTF8" ) ) );
  
          System.out.println( uri );
  
      }
  }
  

  http://java.sun.com/javase/6/docs/api/java/net/URLEncoder.html