[java] String Pattern Matching In Java

That's just a matter of String.contains:

if (input.contains("{item}"))

If you need to know where it occurs, you can use indexOf:

int index = input.indexOf("{item}");
if (index != -1) // -1 means "not found"
{
    ...
}

That's fine for matching exact strings - if you need real patterns (e.g. "three digits followed by at most 2 letters A-C") then you should look into regular expressions.

EDIT: Okay, it sounds like you do want regular expressions. You might want something like this:

private static final Pattern URL_PATTERN =
    Pattern.compile("/\\{[a-zA-Z0-9]+\\}/");

...

if (URL_PATTERN.matches(input).find())