What I don't get is how does Java know the methods of a jar that is referenced? If it is compiled just for running and you can't read it I don't see how you can see the methods still. An example of my question is like if you made a jar that makes a box show up on the screen using a method called
"ShowABox". And you add it to another Java project. Then how does the IDE know that a method called
"ShowABox" exists since the jar was already compiled? You can't read class files in an IDE so why can it read methods?
All the information you are referring to is actually stored in the class files precisely for this reason.
As to seeing the code in class files, you can certainly do so, and it will also prove that the information was kept. Have a look at Java Decompiler. Note you can even build this into eclipse if you want to see it directly there.
Compiled classes contain bytecode. Methods still has their real names, but their code compiled to JVM instructions.
You can read java class file format specification on wiki, read "The constant pool" paragraph, methods names (as other class information) contains in constant pool.
Just try to open some .class file in text editor, you will find methods names there. (.class files are often in project/bin folder, or open .jar as archive and get .class file from there)
A JAR is nothing more than all the class files zipped in a single file with a manifest attached. Each class file completely describes its public interface.
JAR-files have a very specific format — see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JAR_(file_format) — and they contain class-files, which also have a very specific format — see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Java_class_file. This format, in addition to providing the Java Virtual Machine with the information it needs to execute code, also provides IDEs and compilers with the information they need to find classes, interfaces, fields, methods, and so on.
A jar is nothing but an archive containing Java compiled .class binaries compressed for compactness into a single file. Its contents are compiled binaries organized in a directory structure. So you can think of it as a directory with files but compressed into a single archive (just like a zip file). A jar itself is not a binary ("exists since the jar was already compiled") -- it doesn't get compiled itself but it rather contains compiled elements.
Related
Look at this question. When you open .class file with scala plugin enabled (Intellij Idea) it shows you scala code, bu when it is turned off java decompile plugin shows you a decompiled java code. Note that .class files which are compiled by javac decompiles even when scala plugin is enabled. That means that scala plugin "look at" some marker inside class files and intercept file content showing.
What the marker it actually uses? Is there a way to open .class file and change compiler (and/or) other infomartion to make those classes looks like they are compied by javac?
Each class file can have a SourceFile attribute which contains the name of the source code file. Since this is an arbitrary string, it’s a bit about conventions, e.g. for Java source code, it usually contains the file name only, without any package specific directories.
So there still is bit of interpretation of the information, e.g. if the specified name ends with .java, an IDE has to look up the known source tree for a matching file in sub directories matching the actual package.
Determining that the source file is not Java is as simple as recognizing that it has a different file name ending, then, whatever convention is used for the particular language may be used, if a plugin knowing it has been installed. Otherwise, most IDEs will simply look for any text file of that name and display it. There might be LineNumberTable attributes, telling how bytecode instructions map to source line numbers, allowing debuggers to step through the code even without understanding the source code syntax. I already stepped through code compiled from an XSLT file that way.
Of course, the pattern of the specified source code file name may also be used to decide which decompiler to use when the source file has not been found.
Intellij Idea
Intellij IDEA (assuming your question is about this IDE), just figures out from which source file a binary was compiled, and then displays the corresponding source.
It does not extract or produce the source code from the binary. It is just able to find the source for a given binary. You can do this by matching file names and paths. Intellij does probably a bit more, though.
In general
In general, there is almost certainly no good decompiler that can produce Scala sources from class files. Also the source code is not embedded, so all you can achieve is trying to match source code files with binary files.
The Java code you get from decompilation is what you get shown when the IDE could not find the corresponding source file.
A lot of times in Java we want to use some functionality that is given to us in the form of JARs(ex. some external library). Most often than not I've noticed that JARs contain .class files.
Since .class files represent compiled bytecode ready for use by the JVM, my question is the following:
How is it that .class files are all that's needed for us to make use of an external library? Maybe a certain JAR contains the class file called: Person.class. How am I able to reference this class in my code when all that the JAR file exposes is a .class file. Isn't the source code(.java file) what's important and what's needed? In the same way that I can have two classes in the same package, I'm able to reference one from the other, because the two .java files(not .class files) are in the same scope(just to give an example).
Excuse me if it's a dumb question, but I really want to understand this.
Even if you write your source code in .java files, they are eventually compiled to form .class files which store bytecode that can be interpreted easily. When you use the jar files in your project, all the class files inside those jar files are included in your classpath, hence enabling you to use them.
So in a JAR package, .class files are sufficient to be used as a dependency.
The Java compiler takes your Java code, which is something that humans can understand, into .class files, which is something that the Java Virtual Machine (JVM) can understand. The JVM then takes the .class files and runs them on your machine.
A .jar file is effectively a collection of .class files packaged up (under the hood, it's really little more than a .zip in disguise). When you add a .jar onto your classpath, you are telling the JVM that it is one more place it should look when it needs a particular class.
I am not sure if I totally got your question, but the JARs are simply compiled javacode, which means, that the semantic/logic etc of the code has not been changed. You need to be able to access the functions/classes etc of the java code you want to use, because otherwise you would not gain any advantage of using a JAR.
One advantage of the JARs is, that the source code of these libraries is already compiled. Since these .class files are compiled .java files, they are all you need to access the functions that were written in the .java file.
In my situation I have many .jar files being created from a build process. Before I do any debugging I want a way to quickly verify that my .java source matches the .class found in a .jar.
I figure that if I unzip the .jar and find the .class which matches my .java file then I should be able to determine if they're functionally the same.
How can I do this?
The first thing to realize is that compilation doesn't just use the specific .java file for the class being compiled. The compiler also uses information from the other .java and .class files available at compile time. For example, it may inline static final constants. Also, stuff like method overloading depends on which methods have been defined.
That being said, if you compile the same source file with the same compiler as before, you'll probably get the same, or a very similar class file. However, even with identical source files, different compilers (javac vs eclipse) and different versions of the compiler will produce different results.
Therefore, what I'd recommend is first try compiling everything and see if the classfiles match. If the class files don't match, try disassembling them with the Krakatau disassembler and do a diff on the diassemblies to see what the differences are. That will help you see if the difference is unimportant (such as a reordering of the constant pool) or if there are substantive changes to the bytecode.
You can use a java decompiler like http://jd.benow.ca/ in order to be able to view the corresponding source of your class file then you will be able to compare it with your java file
Maybe it would be enough for you if you can use a decompiler? Like one from IntelliJ IDE to see how is the source for you compiled class. You can even debug over the decompiled source.
I am familiar with the jar structure and it will have a .class files in the classes directory as well as META-INF directory containing the information to main().
But where does the actual java code resides in a jar?
Does it resides a compiled byte code? But don't different machines have different compilers?
I know that I can extract the java code using a decompiler which might be illegal. But I am not interested in doing so. I am more interested in understanding how code is stored?
Is it encrypted? If so, what is the encryption algorithm? what is the location inside the jar ?
Unless you specify otherwise, the source code is not included in the JAR file. The JAR file normally only contain class files (compiled JVM instructions), not source code.
A JAR file is just a ZIP file, renamed to mean Java ARchive.
You can check what's inside, unzipping it. If you're on a OS that doesn't allow you to decompress that archive because doesn't appear to be a compressed file, just change the extension to ZIP.
JAR files are not encrypted.
Java Sources are compiled in a platform-neutral Java bytecode, that's a kind of intermediate binary.
Once JVM load the classes it either interprets the bytecode or just-in-time compiles it to the underlying machine. JARs usually only contain that bytecode
Usually sources are not included in the JARs, especially for distribution. Some projects deliver sources as well in a separate archive. You should check with the provider of the JAR you're dealing with to get sources.
If decompiling is illegal or not depends on the terms of the license applied to JAR. You should check those.
Decompiling a class object is not a very easy task, but a guy used to do a very good job with his JAD.
Unfortunately it's no more maintained, but there are some websites where you can still download it.
Decompiled classes will not look exactly as the real sources, and you could have to make some changes, but you'll definitely get an idea about the source.
I have a .jar file that represents a plugin that I am trying to mess with. This is an older version of the plugin, and a newer version was written by somebody else. I have this newer version as a project.
The newer project is full of .java files, and the old plugin is full of .class files. I can import the jar as a project, but it's still all class files. The differences between the class files and the java files are not particularly large, and I would like to see the differences between them. When I do this now, however, the text comparison changes the .class file from its normal representation in the editor to a binary representation. I know that if they were the same type of file, I could select the two and hit "Compare With". How can I do this between a .class and a .java file, or how can I turn one into the other in a way that still allows me to compare the two?
What would really be best is if there were some way for me to edit the jar, by turning the .class files into .java files.
It seems like what you will need is a decompiler to convert the Java .class files (bytecode) back into their original .java source files (text). Then you could compare to the two text files. This seems like it might be useful: http://java.decompiler.free.fr
You can use SOOT (http://www.sable.mcgill.ca/soot/) to do this. Two approaches are possible:
Decompile the .class files into .java files using Dava in SOOT, and then compare the .java files.
Convert both .class and .java files into an intermediate representation called Jimple in SOOT, and compare the Jimple files.
I think the second approach is more reasonable, because:
In the first approach, some Java files are manually developed, while the others are machine generated. Doing a diff on them creates results that are difficult to read.
The Jimple representation is very close to Java source code and relatively easy to read. Reading a diff result on this unified, machine generated format is much easier. Also, if you want, you can convert all Jimple files back to Java source code (well, this is sort of the third approach...).
Because it was a plugin, I was able to import it as a plug-in project, and there was a box to include the source folder. When I checked that I got access to the .java code and was able to diff successfully.