Sockets: Discover port availability using Java

This is the implementation coming from the Apache camel project:

/**
 * Checks to see if a specific port is available.
 *
 * @param port the port to check for availability
 */
public static boolean available(int port) {
    if (port < MIN_PORT_NUMBER || port > MAX_PORT_NUMBER) {
        throw new IllegalArgumentException("Invalid start port: " + port);
    }

    ServerSocket ss = null;
    DatagramSocket ds = null;
    try {
        ss = new ServerSocket(port);
        ss.setReuseAddress(true);
        ds = new DatagramSocket(port);
        ds.setReuseAddress(true);
        return true;
    } catch (IOException e) {
    } finally {
        if (ds != null) {
            ds.close();
        }

        if (ss != null) {
            try {
                ss.close();
            } catch (IOException e) {
                /* should not be thrown */
            }
        }
    }

    return false;
}

They are checking the DatagramSocket as well to check if the port is avaliable in UDP and TCP.

Hope this helps.

If you're not too concerned with performance, you could always try listening on a port using the ServerSocket class. If it throws an exception odds are it's being used.

public static boolean isAvailable(int portNr) {
  boolean portFree;
  try (var ignored = new ServerSocket(portNr)) {
      portFree = true;
  } catch (IOException e) {
      portFree = false;
  }
  return portFree;
}

EDIT: If all you're trying to do is select a free port then new ServerSocket(0) will find one for you.

A cleanup of the answer pointed out by David Santamaria:

/**
 * Check to see if a port is available.
 *
 * @param port
 *            the port to check for availability.
 */
public static boolean isPortAvailable(int port) {
    try (var ss = new ServerSocket(port); var ds = new DatagramSocket(port)) {
        return true;
    } catch (IOException e) {
        return false;
    }
}

This is still subject to a race condition pointed out by user207421 in the comments to David Santamaria's answer (something could grab the port after this method closes the ServerSocket and DatagramSocket and returns).

In my case I had to use DatagramSocket class.

boolean isPortOccupied(int port) {
    DatagramSocket sock = null;
    try {
        sock = new DatagramSocket(port);
        sock.close();
        return false;
    } catch (BindException ignored) {
        return true;
    } catch (SocketException ex) {
        System.out.println(ex);
        return true;
    }
}

Don't forget to import first

import java.net.DatagramSocket;
import java.net.BindException;
import java.net.SocketException;