JavaScript/jQuery check broken links

I developed a small Javascript/jQuery program to access a collection of pdf files for internal use. And I wanted to have the information div of a pdf file highlighted if the file actually exist.

Is there a way to programmatically determine if a link to a file is broken? If so, How?

Any guide or suggestion is appropriated.

If the files are on the same domain, then you can use AJAX to test for their existence as Alex Sexton said; however, you should not use the GET method, just HEAD and then check the HTTP status for the expect value (200, or just less than 400).

Here's a simple method provided from a related question:

function urlExists(url, callback) {
  var xhr = new XMLHttpRequest();
  xhr.onreadystatechange = function() {
    if (xhr.readyState === 4) {
      callback(xhr.status < 400);
    }
  };
  xhr.open('HEAD', url);
  xhr.send();
}

urlExists(someUrl, function(exists) {
    console.log('"%s" exists?', someUrl, exists);
});

Issue is that JavaScript has the same origin policy so you can not grab content from another domain. This won't change by upvoting it (wondering about the 17 votes). I think you need it for external links, so it is impossible just with .js ...

If the files are not on an external website, you could try making an ajax request for each file. If it comes back as a failure, then you know it doesn't exist, otherwise, if it completes and/or takes longer than a given threshold to return, you can guess that it exists. It's not always perfect, but generally 'filenotfound' requests are quick.

var threshold   = 500,
    successFunc = function(){ console.log('It exists!'); };

var myXHR = $.ajax({
  url: $('#checkme').attr('href'),
  type: 'text',
  method: 'get',
  error: function() {
    console.log('file does not exist');
  },
  success: successFunc
});

setTimeout(function(){
  myXHR.abort();
  successFunc();
}, threshold);