Develop Reference

Remove folder from Java classpath at runtime

Is there a way to remove a folder from the classpath similar to adding a folder at runtime (Can a directory be added to the class path at runtime?)

Please find below a snippet as technical example to demonstrate adding / removing a path.
create following source files in any directory
import java.io.File;
import java.lang.reflect.Field;
import java.lang.reflect.Method;
import java.net.URL;
import java.net.URLClassLoader;
import java.util.Stack;
import sun.misc.URLClassPath;
public class EvilPathDemo {
public static void addPath(String path) throws Exception {
URL u = new File(path).toURI().toURL();
URLClassLoader urlClassLoader = (URLClassLoader)
ClassLoader.getSystemClassLoader();
Class<?> urlClass = URLClassLoader.class;
Method method = urlClass.getDeclaredMethod("addURL",
new Class[]{URL.class}
);
method.setAccessible(true);
method.invoke(urlClassLoader, new Object[]{u});
}
public static void removePath(String path) throws Exception {
URL url = new File(path).toURI().toURL();
URLClassLoader urlClassLoader = (URLClassLoader)
ClassLoader.getSystemClassLoader();
Class<?> urlClass = URLClassLoader.class;
Field ucpField = urlClass.getDeclaredField("ucp");
ucpField.setAccessible(true);
URLClassPath ucp = (URLClassPath) ucpField.get(urlClassLoader);
Class<?> ucpClass = URLClassPath.class;
Field urlsField = ucpClass.getDeclaredField("urls");
urlsField.setAccessible(true);
Stack urls = (Stack) urlsField.get(ucp);
urls.remove(url);
}
public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
String parm = args.length == 1 ? args[0] : "";
String evilPath = "/tmp";
String classpath = System.getProperty("java.class.path");
boolean isEvilPathSet = false;
for (String path : classpath.split(File.pathSeparator)) {
if (path.equalsIgnoreCase(evilPath)) {
System.out.printf("evil path '%s' in classpath%n", evilPath);
isEvilPathSet = true;
break;
}
}
if (isEvilPathSet && parm.equalsIgnoreCase("REMOVE")) {
System.out.printf("evil path '%s' will be removed%n", evilPath);
removePath(evilPath);
}
tryToLoad("Foo");
if (parm.equalsIgnoreCase("ADD")) {
System.out.printf("evil path '%s' will be added%n", evilPath);
addPath(evilPath);
}
tryToLoad("Bar");
}
private static void tryToLoad(String className) {
try {
Class<?> foo = Class.forName(className);
System.out.printf("class loaded: %s%n", foo.getName());
} catch (ClassNotFoundException ex) {
System.out.println(ex);
}
}
}
.
public class Foo {
static {
System.out.println("I'm foo...");
}
}
.
public class Bar {
static {
System.out.println("I'm bar...");
}
}
compile them as follow
javac EvilPathDemo.java
javac -d /tmp Foo.java Bar.java
During the test we will try to load the classes Foo and Bar.
without /tmp in the classpath
java -cp . EvilPathDemo
java.lang.ClassNotFoundException: Foo
java.lang.ClassNotFoundException: Bar
adding /tmp to the classpath
java -cp . EvilPathDemo add
java.lang.ClassNotFoundException: Foo
evil path '/tmp' will be added
I'm bar...
class loaded: Bar
with /tmp in the classpath
java -cp .:/tmp EvilPathDemo
evil path '/tmp' in the classpath
I'm foo...
class loaded: Foo
I'm bar...
class loaded: Bar
remove /tmp from the classpath
java -cp .:/tmp EvilPathDemo remove
evil path '/tmp' in the classpath
evil path '/tmp' will be removed
java.lang.ClassNotFoundException: Foo
java.lang.ClassNotFoundException: Bar
During the testing I found out that following cases are not working.
addPath(evilPath);
tryToLoad("Foo");
removePath(evilPath); // had not effect
tryToLoad("Bar");
removePath(evilPath);
tryToLoad("Foo");
addPath(evilPath); // had no effect
tryToLoad("Bar");
tryToLoad("Foo");
removePath(evilPath); // had no effect
tryToLoad("Bar");
I did not spent time to find out why. Because I don't see any practical use in it. If you really need/wish to play with the classpaths have a look how classloaders are working.

The removePath method from above did not work for me and my Weld Container, the url stack was always emtpy.
The following ugly smugly method worked:
public static void removeLastClasspathEntry() throws Exception {
URLClassLoader urlClassLoader = (URLClassLoader) ClassLoader.getSystemClassLoader();
Class<?> urlClass = URLClassLoader.class;
Field ucpField = urlClass.getDeclaredField("ucp");
ucpField.setAccessible(true);
URLClassPath ucp = (URLClassPath) ucpField.get(urlClassLoader);
Field loadersField = URLClassPath.class.getDeclaredField("loaders");
loadersField.setAccessible(true);
List jarEntries = (List) loadersField.get(ucp);
jarEntries.remove(jarEntries.size() - 1);
Field pathField = URLClassPath.class.getDeclaredField("path");
pathField.setAccessible(true);
List pathList = (List) pathField.get(ucp);
URL jarUrl = (URL) pathList.get(pathList.size() - 1);
String jarName = jarUrl.toString();
pathList.remove(pathList.size() - 1);
Field lmapField = URLClassPath.class.getDeclaredField("lmap");
lmapField.setAccessible(true);
Map lmapMap = (Map) lmapField.get(ucp);
lmapMap.remove(jarName.replaceFirst("file:/", "file:///"));
}

Class loaders can be nested so instead of modifying the system class loader which is the root of the tree of class loaders, it is better to simply create a nested classloader and use that to load classes.
The system classloader itself is immutable (for good reasons) but you can do whatever you want in nested class loaders, including destroying them to unload classes and resources. This is commonly used in e.g. osgi and application servers to load/unload e.g. plugins, applications, etc.
For nested class loaders you can completely customize how to load classes. The URLClassloader is probably a good starting point for what you want.

I dont think there is a straight forward way to do it. You can follow :
Get class path variables using : System.getenv("CLASSPATH"). It will return semi colon separated values.
String classPath = System.getenv("CLASSPATH")
Take the folder path as input and replace it with "" like :
String remainigPath = classPath.replace(inputpath,"");
Put the remaining paths in an array using split method.
String[] paths = remainigPath .split(";");
For adding classPath, You already have the code.

I had the same issue, so I tackled it by creating a library that works on every ClassLoader that uses a URLClassPath (so, currently, URLClassLoader).
The library has methods for:
Adding new entries in front
Appending new entries
Remove existing entries
Please note that, since this library accesses internal and proprietary APIs, it is no guaranteed to work in future versions of the JDK. It currently does for Java 7 and Java 8 (Oracle and OpenJDK).
Here is the GitHub page (contribution is appreciated), and here is the Maven Central artifact

Get java.lang.Class object of a class by reading its source(.java) file

I want to get the java.lang.Class object of a class by reading its source file using FileReader.
Actually I want to get all methods, constructors, parent class, overridden methods and imported packages of the class by selecting its source file using JFileChooser. So, I think I got these all things by using its class Class object methods like getConstructors() etc.
I have tried this, but it gives java.lang.ClassNotFoundException...
public static void main(String[] args) {
File file = new File(
"F:\\study\\projects\\saralbhakti\\src\\signup\\SignupServlet.java");
try {
// Convert File to a URL
URL url = file.toURL(); // file:/c:/myclasses/
URL[] urls = new URL[] { url };
// Create a new class loader with the directory
ClassLoader cl = new URLClassLoader(urls);
// Load in the class; MyClass.class should be located in
// the directory file:/c:/myclasses/com/mycompany
Class cls = cl.loadClass("signup.SignupServlet");
System.out.println("Class Name : " + cls.getName());
Method[] declaredMethods = cls.getDeclaredMethods();
System.out.println("All Methods : " + declaredMethods.length);
} catch (MalformedURLException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
} catch (ClassNotFoundException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}
}

Classes are loaded from .class files, not .java files. You have two options:
1) Use a different API, like AST parsing, which is designed to read and understand .java files (but not execute the code in them)
2) Programmatically compile the .java file, then read the .class file. This is ugly and wonky and horrible and full of caveats and probably not what you want to do.

Java: Dynamically loading external classes

I am writing an application that will load Java scripts. I currently have a GUI which utilizes a JFileChooser to allow the user to select a script from their machine. The script file can be anywhere. It is not on the classpath. Having only a File object to represent that script file, how can I obtain a Class representation of it?
I know that to load a class you need its binary name, so in.this.format. However, the problem with that is I don't know how the script writer may have packaged it. For example, he/she may have, while developing it, put the script file in the package foo.bar. After I download this script and place it in my documents (i.e., not in foo/bar), I can't load the script without knowing that it was packaged in foo.bar. If the class name is Test and I try to create a URLClassLoader pointing to the script file by doing new URLClassLoader(new URL[] { new URL(scriptFile.toURI().toURL()) }) and I do classLoader.loadClass("Test") I will get an exception saying that the class had the wrong name, and the correct name is foo.bar.Test. But how am I supposed to know that ahead of time?
This is what I have right now:
public class ScriptClassLoader extends URLClassLoader {
private final File script;
public ScriptClassLoader(File script) throws MalformedURLException {
super(new URL[] { script.toURI().toURL() });
this.script = script;
}
public Class<?> load() throws ClassNotFoundException {
String fileName = script.getName();
String className = fileName.substring(0, fileName.indexOf(".class"));
return loadClass(className);
}
}
How do people load scripts at runtime that are not part of the program's classpath, and the binary name of the class is not known?

If you just need to load a class from a given .class file, no matter how this classes is named, you can load the data yourself and then call ClassLoader's defineClass() method:
RandomAccessFile raf = new RandomAccessFile(script, "r");
try {
byte[] classData = new byte[(int) raf.length()];
raf.readFully(classData);
return super.defineClass(null, classData, 0, classData.length);
} finally {
raf.close();
}

How can I change the running directory of a program - by setting it in the exe shortcut?

I have an exe process that is running with a shortcut.
In the "Start in" property of the shortcut I set it to the folder where all app resources are. The process still looks for files at the location of the exe and not the location written in the shortcut.
I can also see it in Process Explorer - the "current directory" is the location of the exe.
Is there a way to change it?
(If I wasn't clear enough -
I want to put my app in a central network location and not in each user folder - but I want it to run - above each user folder by putting a shortcut in each user folder.)
BTW : Why don't I solve it with code writing? Because of third party jars I have in my exe (I am using exe4j to make an exe)

From exe4-j documentation.., it seems this can be configured in exe4j project.
Working directory
For some applications (especially GUI applications) you might want to change the working directory
to a specific directory relative to the executable, for example to read config files that are in a fixed
location. To do so, please select the Change working directory to: checkbox and enter a
directory relative to the executable in the adjacent text field. To change the current directory to the
same directory where the executable is located, please enter a single dot.

One alternative is to use a System Property. Just create a shortcut like this:
java -Dmyproperty="\\myserver\myfolder" -jar yourjar.jar
And get this property on your program:
System.getProperty("myproperty");
You can also set multiple System Properties.

I would start the java application via a cmd or bat file, then change to the work dir before you call javaw. If you don't do any thing special in your java application code all the paths in it will be relative to the place where you started java.
Jess

You can hack the classpath programatically which would allow you to specify a specific folder or series of folders to access the data.
import java.io.IOException;
import java.io.File;
import java.net.URLClassLoader;
import java.net.URL;
import java.lang.reflect.Method;
public class ClassPathHacker {
private static final Class[] parameters = new Class[]{URL.class};
public static void addFile(String s) throws IOException {
File f = new File(s);
addFile(f);
}//end method
public static void addFile(File f) throws IOException {
addURL(f.toURI().toURL());
}//end method
public static void addURL(URL u) throws IOException {
URLClassLoader sysloader = (URLClassLoader) ClassLoader.getSystemClassLoader();
Class sysclass = URLClassLoader.class;
try {
Method method = sysclass.getDeclaredMethod("addURL", parameters);
method.setAccessible(true);
method.invoke(sysloader, new Object[]{u});
} catch (Throwable t) {
t.printStackTrace();
throw new IOException("Error, could not add URL to system classloader");
}//end try catch
}//end method
}//end class
with the property loader file of
import java.io.InputStream;
import java.util.Enumeration;
import java.util.Locale;
import java.util.Properties;
import java.util.ResourceBundle;
public abstract class PropertyLoader
{
/**
* Looks up a resource named 'name' in the classpath. The resource must map
* to a file with .properties extention. The name is assumed to be absolute
* and can use either "/" or "." for package segment separation with an
* optional leading "/" and optional ".properties" suffix. Thus, the
* following names refer to the same resource:
* <pre>
* some.pkg.Resource
* some.pkg.Resource.properties
* some/pkg/Resource
* some/pkg/Resource.properties
* /some/pkg/Resource
* /some/pkg/Resource.properties
* </pre>
*
* #param name classpath resource name [may not be null]
* #param loader classloader through which to load the resource [null
* is equivalent to the application loader]
*
* #return resource converted to java.util.Properties [may be null if the
* resource was not found and THROW_ON_LOAD_FAILURE is false]
* #throws IllegalArgumentException if the resource was not found and
* THROW_ON_LOAD_FAILURE is true
*/
public static Properties loadProperties (String name, ClassLoader loader)
{
if (name == null)
throw new IllegalArgumentException ("null input: name");
if (name.startsWith ("/"))
name = name.substring (1);
if (name.endsWith (SUFFIX))
name = name.substring (0, name.length () - SUFFIX.length ());
Properties result = null;
InputStream in = null;
try
{
if (loader == null) loader = ClassLoader.getSystemClassLoader ();
if (LOAD_AS_RESOURCE_BUNDLE)
{
name = name.replace ('/', '.');
// Throws MissingResourceException on lookup failures:
final ResourceBundle rb = ResourceBundle.getBundle (name,
Locale.getDefault (), loader);
result = new Properties ();
for (Enumeration keys = rb.getKeys (); keys.hasMoreElements ();)
{
final String key = (String) keys.nextElement ();
final String value = rb.getString (key);
result.put (key, value);
}
}
else
{
name = name.replace ('.', '/');
if (! name.endsWith (SUFFIX))
name = name.concat (SUFFIX);
// Returns null on lookup failures:
in = loader.getResourceAsStream(name);
if (in != null)
{
result = new Properties ();
result.load (in); // Can throw IOException
}
}
}
catch (Exception e)
{
result = null;
}
finally
{
if (in != null) try { in.close (); } catch (Throwable ignore) {}
}
if (THROW_ON_LOAD_FAILURE && (result == null))
{
throw new IllegalArgumentException ("could not load [" + name + "]"+
" as " + (LOAD_AS_RESOURCE_BUNDLE
? "a resource bundle"
: "a classloader resource"));
}
return result;
}
/**
* A convenience overload of {#link #loadProperties(String, ClassLoader)}
* that uses the current thread's context classloader.
*/
public static Properties loadProperties (final String name)
{
return loadProperties (name,
Thread.currentThread ().getContextClassLoader ());
}
private static final boolean THROW_ON_LOAD_FAILURE = true;
private static final boolean LOAD_AS_RESOURCE_BUNDLE = false;
private static final String SUFFIX = ".properties";
} // End of class
then you can add a path as follows
try {
//First Load up the properties and populate the config
ClassPathHacker.addFile("/pathtomyapp");
} catch (IOException ex) {
ex.printStackTrace();
}
properties = PropertyLoader.loadProperties("myapp");
or you can also use getResourceBundle to get your resources, this is just one example of hacking the classpath to allow files to be available, you can always just add the classpath programatically and let the jar files you need to be available to reside there, so if you always ensure that the app network path is Q: you can add Q:\ to the classpath.

Method to dynamically load java class files

What would be a good way to dynamically load java class files so that a program compiled into a jar can read all the class files in a directory and use them, and how can one write the files so that they have the necessary package name in relation to the jar?

I believe it's a ClassLoader you're after.
I suggest you start by looking at the example below which loads class files that are not on the class path.
// Create a File object on the root of the directory containing the class file
File file = new File("c:\\myclasses\\");
try {
// Convert File to a URL
URL url = file.toURI().toURL(); // file:/c:/myclasses/
URL[] urls = new URL[]{url};
// Create a new class loader with the directory
ClassLoader cl = new URLClassLoader(urls);
// Load in the class; MyClass.class should be located in
// the directory file:/c:/myclasses/com/mycompany
Class cls = cl.loadClass("com.mycompany.MyClass");
} catch (MalformedURLException e) {
} catch (ClassNotFoundException e) {
}

Class myclass = ClassLoader.getSystemClassLoader().loadClass("package.MyClass");
or
Class myclass = Class.forName("package.MyClass");
or loading the class from different folder which is not in the classpath:
File f = new File("C:/dir");
URL[] cp = {f.toURI().toURL()};
URLClassLoader urlcl = new URLClassLoader(cp);
Class myclass = urlcl.loadClass("package.MyClass");
For further usage of the loaded Class you can use Reflection if the loaded Class is not in your classpath and you can not import and cast it. For example if you want to call a static method with the name "main":
Method m = myclass.getMethod("main", String[].class);
String[] args = new String[0];
m.invoke(null, args); // invoke the method

If you add a directory to your class path, you can add classes after the application starts and those classes can be loaded as soon as they have been written to the directory.