How to check for a valid URL in Java?

Consider using the Apache Commons UrlValidator class

UrlValidator urlValidator = new UrlValidator();
urlValidator.isValid("http://my favorite site!");

There are several properties that you can set to control how this class behaves, by default http, https, and ftp are accepted.

Here is way I tried and found useful,

URL u = new URL(name); // this would check for the protocol
u.toURI(); // does the extra checking required for validation of URI 

I'd love to post this as a comment to Tendayi Mawushe's answer, but I'm afraid there is not enough space ;)

This is the relevant part from the Apache Commons UrlValidator source:

/**
 * This expression derived/taken from the BNF for URI (RFC2396).
 */
private static final String URL_PATTERN =
        "/^(([^:/?#]+):)?(//([^/?#]*))?([^?#]*)(\\?([^#]*))?(#(.*))?/";
//         12            3  4          5       6   7        8 9

/**
 * Schema/Protocol (ie. http:, ftp:, file:, etc).
 */
private static final int PARSE_URL_SCHEME = 2;

/**
 * Includes hostname/ip and port number.
 */
private static final int PARSE_URL_AUTHORITY = 4;

private static final int PARSE_URL_PATH = 5;

private static final int PARSE_URL_QUERY = 7;

private static final int PARSE_URL_FRAGMENT = 9;

You can easily build your own validator from there.

My favorite approach, without external libraries:

try {
    URI uri = new URI(name);

    // perform checks for scheme, authority, host, etc., based on your requirements

    if ("mailto".equals(uri.getScheme()) {/*Code*/}
    if (uri.getHost() == null) {/*Code*/}

} catch (URISyntaxException e) {
}