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Broken Links

A broken link is a hyperlink or image URL that returns:

  • 4xx (Client errors like 404, 403)
  • 5xx (Server errors)

Selenium alone cannot validate HTTP status codes — it is used only to collect URLs. Validation is done using HTTP calls.

High-Level Flow​

  1. Open page using Selenium
  2. Collect all links and images
  3. Filter invalid URLs
  4. Send HTTP request (HEAD / GET)
  5. Validate response code
List<WebElement> links = driver.findElements(By.tagName("a"));

Extract Images​

List<WebElement> images = driver.findElements(By.tagName("img"));
import java.net.HttpURLConnection;
import java.net.URL;
import java.util.List;
import org.openqa.selenium.*;

public class BrokenLinks {

    public static void checkBrokenLinks(WebDriver driver) {

        List<WebElement> links = driver.findElements(By.tagName("a"));

        for (WebElement link : links) {

            String url = link.getAttribute("href");

            if (url == null || url.isEmpty()) continue;
            if (url.startsWith("javascript")
                || url.startsWith("mailto")
                || url.startsWith("tel")) continue;

            try {
                HttpURLConnection connection =
                    (HttpURLConnection) new URL(url).openConnection();

                connection.setRequestMethod("HEAD");
                connection.setConnectTimeout(5000);
                connection.connect();

                int responseCode = connection.getResponseCode();

                if (responseCode >= 400) {
                    System.out.println("Broken Link: " + url + " -> " + responseCode);
                }

            } catch (Exception e) {
                System.out.println("Exception for URL: " + url);
            }
        }
    }
}

Image Validation​

for (WebElement img : driver.findElements(By.tagName("img"))) {
    String src = img.getAttribute("src");
    if (src == null || src.isEmpty()) continue;

    HttpURLConnection conn =
        (HttpURLConnection) new URL(src).openConnection();
    conn.setRequestMethod("HEAD");
    conn.connect();

    if (conn.getResponseCode() >= 400) {
        System.out.println("Broken Image: " + src);
    }
}

HEAD vs GET​

  • HEAD: Faster, no response body
  • GET: Needed when HEAD is blocked (403)

Fallback Logic​

if (responseCode == 403) {
    connection.disconnect();
    connection = (HttpURLConnection) new URL(url).openConnection();
    connection.setRequestMethod("GET");
    responseCode = connection.getResponseCode();
}

Best Practices​

  • Run once per build, not per test
  • Allow 2xx and 3xx as valid
  • Skip third-party links if needed
  • Log failures to reports
  • Parallelize for large pages

CI Rule​

if (responseCode >= 400) {
    Assert.fail("Broken link found");
}

Robot Framework Hint​

  • Use Get WebElements
  • Extract href
  • Validate using RequestsLibrary