Develop Reference

Getting a specific version of an image with Jib (Maven, Docker, testcontainers)

I'm trying to understand a comment that a colleague made. We're using testcontainers to create a fixture:
import org.testcontainers.containers.GenericContainer;
import org.testcontainers.utility.DockerImageName;
public class SalesforceFixture extends GenericContainer<SalesforceFixture> {
private static final String APPLICATION_NAME = "salesforce-emulator";
public SalesforceFixture() {
// super(ImageResolver.resolve(APPLICATION_NAME));
super(DockerImageName.parse("gcr.io/ad-selfserve/salesforce-emulator:latest"));
...
}
...
The commented code is what it used to be. The next line is my colleague's suggestion. And on that line he commented:
This is the part I don't know. The [ImageResolver] gets the specific version of the emulator, rather than the latest. You need a docker-info file for that though, which jib doesn't automatically generate (but I think it can).
This is what I know or have figured so far:
SalesforceFixture is a class that will be used by other projects to write tests. It spins up a container in Docker, running a service that emulates the real service's API. It's like a local version of the service that behaves enough like the real thing that if one writes code and tests using the fixture, it should work the same in production. (This is where my knowledge ends.)
I looked into ImageResolver—it seems to be a class we wrote that searches a filesystem for something:
public static String resolve(String applicationName, File... roots) {
Stream<File> searchPaths = Arrays.stream(roots).flatMap((value) -> {
return Stream.of(new File(value, "../" + applicationName), new File(value, applicationName));
});
Optional<File> buildFile = searchPaths.flatMap((searchFile) -> {
if (searchFile.exists()) {
File imageFile = new File(searchFile + File.separator + "/target/docker/image-name");
if (imageFile.exists()) {
return Stream.of(imageFile);
}
}
return Stream.empty();
}).findAny();
InputStream build = (InputStream)buildFile.map(ImageResolver::fileStream).orElseGet(() -> {
return searchClasspath(applicationName);
});
if (build != null) {
try {
return IOUtils.toString(build, Charset.defaultCharset()).trim();
} catch (IOException var6) {
throw new RuntimeException("An exception has occurred while reading build file", var6);
}
} else {
throw new RuntimeException("Could not resolve target image for application: " + applicationName);
}
}
But I'm confused. What filesystem? Like, what is the present working directory? My local computer, wherever I ran the Java program from? Or is this from within some container? (I don't think so.) Or maybe the directory structure inside a .jar file? Or somewhere in gcr.io?
What does he mean about a "specific version number" vs. "latest"? I mean, when I build this project, whatever it built is all I have. Isn't that equivalent to "latest"? In what case would an older version of an image be present? (That's what made me think of gcr.io.)
Or, does he mean, that in the project using this project's image, one will not be able to specify a version via Maven/pom.xml—it will always spin up the latest.
Sorry this is long, just trying to "show my work." Any hints welcome. I'll keep looking.

I can't comment on specifics of your own internal implementations, but ImageResolver seems to work on your local filesystem, e.g. it looks into your target/ directory and also touches the classpath. I can imagine this code was just written for resolving an actual image name (not an image), since it also returns a String.
Regarding latest, using a latest tag for a Docker image is generally considered an anti-pattern, so likely your colleague is commenting about this. Here is a random article from the web explaining some of the issues with latest tag:
https://vsupalov.com/docker-latest-tag/
Besides, I don't understand why you ask these questions which are very specific to your project here on SO rather than asking your colleague.

How to create a custom ClassLoader for nested JAR files

I am working with a Java library that has some nested JAR files in lib package.
I have 2 issues:
I cannot see referenced types in my IDE (I am using JetBrains IntelliJ)
Of course I get class not defined at runtime
I understand that I have to create and use a custom ClassLoader, will it solve both problems?
Is this the recommended way of achieving this result?
The JAR file is an Italian government provided library and I cannot modify it as it will be periodically updated as the regulation changes.

Yes, as far as I know, the standard ClassLoaders do not support nested JARs. Which is sad, since it would be a really nice idea, but Oracle just doesn't give a damn about it. Here is a 18-year old ticket:
https://bugs.java.com/bugdatabase/view_bug.do?bug_id=4735639
If you are getting those JARs from somebody else, the best thing would be to contact the vendor and ask them for a delivery in standards-compatible format. From your answer I realize that this might be difficult to achieve, but I would still try to talk to them, because it's the right thing to do. I'm pretty sure that everybody else in your position has the same issue. According to industry standards, such situation would usually hint your vendor into using Maven repository for their deliverables.
If talking to your vendor fails, you can re-pack the JARs as you get them. I would recommend writing an automated script for that and making sure it gets run on each delivery. You can either put all .class files into one uber-JAR, or just move the nested JARs outside the enclosing JAR. Caveat 1: there can be more than one class with the same name, so you need to make sure to take the correct one. Caveat 2: if the JARs were signed, you will lose the signature (unless you sign them with your own).
Option 3: you can always implement your own ClassLoader to load the classes from anywhere, even from the kitchen sink.
This guy did exactly this: https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/library/j-onejar/index.html
The short summary is that such a ClassLoader has to perform recursive unzipping, which is a bit of a pain-in-the-ass because archives are essentially made for stream access and not for random access, but apart from that it's perfectly doable.
You can use his solution as a "wrapper loader" which will replace your main class.
As far as IntelliJ IDEA goes, I don't believe it supports this functionality out-of-the box. The best thing would be either to re-package JARs as described above and add them as separate classpath entries, or to search if anybody has written a plugin for nested JAR support.

I don't know what you want to do after load jars.
In my case, use jar dynamic loading for Servlet samples.
try{
final URLClassLoader loader = (URLClassLoader)ClassLoader.getSystemClassLoader();
final Method method = URLClassLoader.class.getDeclaredMethod("addURL", URL.class);
method.setAccessible(true);
new File(dir).listFiles(new FileFilter() {
#Override
public boolean accept(File jar) {
// load file if it is 'jar' type
if( jar.toString().toLowerCase().contains(".jar") ){
try {
method.invoke(loader, new Object[]{jar.toURI().toURL()});
XMLog.info_arr(logger, jar, " is loaded.");
JarInputStream jarFile = new JarInputStream(new FileInputStream(jar));
JarEntry jarEntry;
while (true) {
// load jar file
jarEntry = jarFile.getNextJarEntry();
if (jarEntry == null) {
break;
}
// load .class file in loaded jar file
if (jarEntry.getName().endsWith(".class")) {
Class loadedClass = Class.forName(jarEntry.getName().replaceAll("/", "\\.").replace(".class",""));
/*
* In my case, I load jar file for Servlet.
* If you want to use it for other case, then change below codes
*/
WebServlet annotaions = (WebServlet) loadedClass.getAnnotation(WebServlet.class);
// load annotation and mapping if it is Servlet
if (annotaions.urlPatterns().length > 0) {
ServletRegistration.Dynamic registration = servletContextEvent.getServletContext().addServlet(annotaions.urlPatterns().toString(), loadedClass);
registration.addMapping(annotaions.urlPatterns());
}
}
}
} catch (Exception e) {
System.err.println("Can't load classes in jar");
}
}
return false;
}
});
} catch(Exception e) {
throw new RuntimeException(e);
}

Interestingly I just solved a version of this problem for JesterJ, though I had the additional requirement of loading dependencies for the code in the jar file as well. JesterJ (as of this evening's commits!) runs from a fat jar and accepts an argument denoting a second fat jar containing the classes, dependencies and configuration for a document ingestion plan (the user's code that I need to run).
The way my solution works is I borrow the knowledge of how to load jars inside of jars from Uno-Jar (the library that produces the fat jar), and stuff my own classloader in above it to control the evaluation order of the class loaders.
The key bit from https://github.com/nsoft/jesterj/blob/jdk11/code/ingest/src/main/java/org/jesterj/ingest/Main.java looks like this:
JesterJLoader jesterJLoader;
File jarfile = new File(javaConfig);
URL planConfigJarURL;
try {
planConfigJarURL = jarfile.toURI().toURL();
} catch (MalformedURLException e) {
throw new RuntimeException(e); // boom
}
jesterJLoader = (JesterJLoader) ClassLoader.getSystemClassLoader();
ClassLoader loader;
if (isUnoJar) {
JarClassLoader jarClassLoader = new JarClassLoader(jesterJLoader, planConfigJarURL.toString());
jarClassLoader.load(null);
loader = jarClassLoader;
} else {
loader = new URLClassLoader(new URL[]{planConfigJarURL}, jesterJLoader);
}
jesterJLoader.addExtLoader(loader);
My JesterJLoader is here:
https://github.com/nsoft/jesterj/blob/jdk11/code/ingest/src/main/java/org/jesterj/ingest/utils/JesterJLoader.java
Though if you are happy to simply delegate up and rely on existing classes on the main class path (rather than loading additional dependencies from the sub-fat-jar like I'm doing) yours could be much simpler. I go to a lot of effort to allow it to check the sub-jar first rather than delegating up to the parent immediately, and then have to keep track of what's been sent to the sub-jar to avoid loops and subsequent StackOverflowError...
Also note that the line where I get the system class loader is going to NOT be what you want, I'm also monkeying with the system loader to work around impolite things that some of my dependencies are doing with class loading.
If you decide to try to check out Uno-Jar pls note that resource loading for this nested scenario may yet be wonky and things definitely won't work before https://github.com/nsoft/uno-jar/commit/cf5af42c447c22edb9bbc6bd08293f0c23db86c2
Also: recently committed thinly tested code warning :)
Disclosure: I maintain both JesterJ and Uno-Jar (a fork of One-JAR the library featured in the link supplied by jurez) and welcome any bug reports or comments or even contributions!

this.getClass().getResource("").getPath() returns an incorrect path

I am currently making a small simple Java program for my Computer Science Final, which needs to get the path of the current running class. The class files are in the C:\2013\game\ folder.
To get this path, I call this code segment in my main class constructor:
public game(){
String testPath = this.getClass().getResource("").getPath();
//Rest of game
}
However, this command instead returns this String: "/" despite the correct output being "C:/2013/game"
Additionally, I attempted to rectify this by using this code:
public game(){
String testPath = this.getClass().getClassLoader().getResource("").getPath();
}
This returns a NullPointerException, which originates from the fact that getClassLoader() returns null, despite working on my Eclipse IDE. Any Ideas?

If you want to load a file in the same path as the code then I suggest you put it in the same root folder as the code and not the same path as the class.
Reason : class can be inside a jar, data file can be put in same jar but its more difficult to edit and update then.
Also suggest you see the preferences class suggested in comments : http://www.javacodegeeks.com/2011/09/use-javautilprefspreferences-instead-of.html though in some cases I think its okay to have your own data/ excel/csv/ java.util.Properties file
Not sure about why it is working in eclipse but I would suggest you focus on running it from a command prompt/ terminal as that is the 'real mode' when it goes live
You could just ask for your class
String s = getClass().getName();
int i = s.lastIndexOf(".");
if(i > -1) s = s.substring(i + 1);
s = s + ".class";
System.out.println("name " +s);
Object testPath = this.getClass().getResource(s);
System.out.println(testPath);
This will give you
name TstPath.class
file:/java/Projects/tests3b/build/classes/s/TstPath.class
Which is my eclipse build path ...
need to parse this to get the path where the class was loaded.
Remember:
App could be started from elsewhere
class can be in jar then path will be different (will point to a jar and file inside that
classpaths can be many at runtime and point 1
a class might be made at runtime via network/ Proxy / injection etc and thus not have a file source, so this is not a generic solution.
think what you want to acheive at a higher level and post that question. meaning why do you want this path?
do you want the app path :-
File f = new File("./");
f.getCanonicalPath();//...
So an app can be started from folder c:\app1\run\
The jar could be at c:\app1\libsMain\myapp.jar
and a helper jar could be at c:\commonlibs\set1
So this will only tell you where the JVM found your class, that may or maynot be what you need.
if inside a jar will give you some thing like this in unix or windows
jar:file:c:\app\my.jar!/s/TstPath.class
If package is s and class is TstPath, you can be sure this will work as the class has to be there ...
now to parse this you can look for your class name and remove / or \ till you get path you want. String lastIndexOf will help

You can use :
URL classURL = getClass().getProtectionDomain().getCodeSource().getLocation();

The call to getResource([String]) requires a path relative to the folder that contains the class it is being called from. So, if you have the following, anything you pass into MyClass.class.getResource([path]); must be a valid path relative to the com/putable/ package folder and it must point to a real file:
package com.putable;
public class MyClass{}
Using the empty string simply isn't valid, because there can never be a file name that equals the empty string. But, you could do getResource(getClass().getSimpleName()). Just remove the file name from the end of the path returned by that call and you will have the class directory you want.

ClassLoader loader = Test.class.getClassLoader();
System.out.println(loader.getResource("Test.class"));
also
Test.class.getProtectionDomain().getCodeSource().getLocation().getPath());

Try this.
import java.io.File;
public class TT {
/**
* #param args
*/
public static void main(String[] args) {
// TODO Auto-generated method stub
String path = TT.class.getResource("").getPath();
File file = new File(path);
System.out.println(file.getAbsolutePath());
}
}

Try use this code
public game()
{
String className = this.getClass().getSimpleName();
String testPath = this.getClass().getResource(className+".class");
System.out.println("Current Running Location is :"+testPath);
}
visit the link for more information
Find where java class is loaded from

Print out absolute path for a file in your classpath i.e. build/resources/main/someFileInClassPath.txt Disclaimer, this is similar to another solution on this page that used TT.class..., but this did not work for me instead TT..getClassLoader()... did work for me.
import java.io.File;
public class TT {
/**
* #param args
*/
public static void main(String[] args) {
String path = TT.getClassLoader().getResource("someFileInClassPath.txt").getPath();
File file = new File(path);
System.out.println(file.getAbsolutePath());
}
}

Because you used class.getResource(filePath).getpath() in a *.jar file. So the path includes "!". If you want to get content of file in *.jar file, use the following code:
MyClass.class.getResourceAsStream("/path/fileName")

How to prevent xalan.jar that has META-INF\services\javax.xml.transform.TransformerFactory from taking over JDK 1.6 built in Xalan implementation?

Consider this code (based entirely on flying saucer's "getting started" code, their rights reserved):
package flyingsaucerpdf;
import java.io.File;
import java.io.FileOutputStream;
import java.io.OutputStream;
import org.xhtmlrenderer.pdf.ITextRenderer;
public class PDFMaker {
public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
new PDFMaker().go();
}
public void go() throws Exception {
String inputFile = "sample.html";
String url = new File(inputFile).toURI().toURL().toString();
String outputFile = "firstdoc.pdf";
OutputStream os = new FileOutputStream(outputFile);
ITextRenderer renderer = new ITextRenderer();
renderer.setDocument(url);
renderer.layout();
renderer.createPDF(os);
os.close();
}
}
Few facts:
Running it standalone (calling main) with JDK 1.6 or 1.5 works perfectly (PDF is generated)
But when loaded via a URLClassLoader from an existing web application it fails with this error:
Caused by: org.w3c.dom.DOMException: NAMESPACE_ERR: An attempt is made to create or change an object in a way which is incorrect with regard to namespaces.
at org.apache.xerces.dom.AttrNSImpl.setName(Unknown Source)
at org.apache.xerces.dom.AttrNSImpl.(Unknown Source)
at org.apache.xerces.dom.CoreDocumentImpl.createAttributeNS(Unknown Source)
at org.apache.xerces.dom.ElementImpl.setAttributeNS(Unknown Source)
at org.apache.xml.utils.DOMBuilder.startElement(DOMBuilder.java:307)
... 19 more
After looking for a while in the wrong place (for example, I created a child-first / parent-last class loader suspecting xalan / xerces jars, but it still fails), I finally narrowed down the root cause:
It seems that the web application that loads my code, has an old xalan.jar, specification version 1.2
I did a little test, I ran the code above as standalone (which worked fine before) but this time I added the xalan.jar from the web app to it's classpath, and bingo, the same error as in the web app scenario
So I inspected that old xalan.jar and wondered, what can cause the JVM to load it's old xalan implementation instead of the JDK's? after all my child-first class loader is also parent-last e.g. system in the middle, to say: searching the system classloader before the parent (to avoid loading parent overriden JDK jars, just like this case of the parent's xalan.jar overriding the JDK's xalan implementation)
Then something cought my eyes - a file in: xalan.jar/META-INF/services/ named javax.xml.transform.TransformerFactory with this content:
org.apache.xalan.processor.TransformerFactoryImpl
So I imediately pressed Ctrl+T in eclipse and looked for the full qualified name... only in xalan.jar!
Then I searched only for "TransformerFactoryImpl", and this is what the JDK has:
com.sun.org.apache.xalan.internal.xsltc.trax.TransformerFactoryImpl
Easy to see the difference
So, if you read till here, my bottom line question is: How do I make my TransformerFactory use the JDK's implementation and not the old Xalan's one? (I can't remove that jar from the web app my code will be loaded from)

It seems the answer is simpler than I thought.
In your classloader, add to the classpath (jar not required) this folder: /META-INF/services/
In it, create a file named javax.xml.transform.TransformerFactory
Edit it and set this as it's content to: com.sun.org.apache.xalan.internal.xsltc.trax.TransformerFactoryImpl
Thats it!
Why does it work? see this class used by Java for loading the Xalan implementation.
Notice that it seems de-facto a parent-last (or child-first) loader for that specific "META-INF" entry (the oposite of how regular Java class loaders work, e.g. parent-first / child-last) but feel free to correct me if I'm wrong
Snippet from javax.xml.datatype.FactoryFinder
/*
* Try to find provider using Jar Service Provider Mechanism
*
* #return instance of provider class if found or null
*/
private static Object findJarServiceProvider(String factoryId)
throws ConfigurationError
{
String serviceId = "META-INF/services/" + factoryId;
InputStream is = null;
// First try the Context ClassLoader
ClassLoader cl = ss.getContextClassLoader();
if (cl != null) {
is = ss.getResourceAsStream(cl, serviceId);
// If no provider found then try the current ClassLoader
if (is == null) {
cl = FactoryFinder.class.getClassLoader();
is = ss.getResourceAsStream(cl, serviceId);
}
} else {
// No Context ClassLoader, try the current
// ClassLoader
cl = FactoryFinder.class.getClassLoader();
is = ss.getResourceAsStream(cl, serviceId);
}
if (is == null) {
// No provider found
return null;
}
...

You should also note that you aren't required to use the SPI mechanism at all.
You can use http://download.oracle.com/javase/6/docs/api/javax/xml/xpath/XPathFactory.html#newInstance(java.lang.String, java.lang.String, java.lang.ClassLoader) to use a copy of xalan in your own isolated class loader once you know the name of the relevant class.

If you are developing a web application and thus can't set a system property, then the most direct way is to explicitly request the JDK transformer.
Here is an example for the internal XSLTC transformer (has StAXSupport).
TransformerFactory tf = TransformerFactory.newInstance(
"com.sun.org.apache.xalan.internal.xsltc.trax.TransformerFactoryImpl", null);

I'm using wildfly application server and 3rd jar which uses TransformerFactory.
Overriding TransformerFactory using file resources\META-INF\services\javax.xml.transform.TransformerFactory. Didn't work for me.
When I looked to FactoryFinder implementation (JDK8u201). I found the following code fragment
String systemProp = ss.getSystemProperty(factoryId);
if (systemProp != null) {
dPrint("found system property, value=" + systemProp);
return newInstance(type, systemProp, null, true);
}
Thus, solution was to set system property javax.xml.transform.TransformerFactory to com.sun.org.apache.xalan.internal.xsltc.trax.TransformerFactoryImpl.
Cheers

Problem reloading a jar using URLClassLoader

I need to add plugin functionality to an existing application for certain parts of the application. I want to be able to add a jar at runtime and the application should be able to load a class from the jar without restarting the app. So far so good. I found some samples online using URLClassLoader and it works fine.
I also wanted the ability to reload the same class when an updated version of the jar is available. I again found some samples and the key to achieving this as I understand is that I need to use a new classloader instance for each new load.
I wrote some sample code but hit a NullPointerException. First let me show you guys the code:
package test.misc;
import java.io.File;
import java.net.URL;
import java.net.URLClassLoader;
import plugin.misc.IPlugin;
public class TestJarLoading {
public static void main(String[] args) {
IPlugin plugin = null;
while(true) {
try {
File file = new File("C:\\plugins\\test.jar");
String classToLoad = "jartest.TestPlugin";
URL jarUrl = new URL("jar", "","file:" + file.getAbsolutePath()+"!/");
URLClassLoader cl = new URLClassLoader(new URL[] {jarUrl}, TestJarLoading.class.getClassLoader());
Class loadedClass = cl.loadClass(classToLoad);
plugin = (IPlugin) loadedClass.newInstance();
plugin.doProc();
} catch (Exception e) {
e.printStackTrace();
} finally {
try {
Thread.sleep(30000);
} catch (InterruptedException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}
}
}
}
}
IPlugin is a simple interface with just one method doProc:
public interface IPlugin {
void doProc();
}
and jartest.TestPlugin is an implementation of this interface where doProc just prints out some statements.
Now, I package the jartest.TestPlugin class into a jar called test.jar and place it under C:\plugins and run this code. The first iteration runs smoothly and the class loads without issues.
When the program is executing the sleep statement, I replace C:\plugins\test.jar with a new jar containing an updated version of the same class and wait for the next iteration of while. Now here's what I don't understand. Sometimes the updated class gets reloaded without issues i.e. the next iteration runs fine. But sometimes, I see an exception thrown:
java.lang.NullPointerException
at java.io.FilterInputStream.close(FilterInputStream.java:155)
at sun.net.www.protocol.jar.JarURLConnection$JarURLInputStream.close(JarURLConnection.java:90)
at sun.misc.Resource.getBytes(Resource.java:137)
at java.net.URLClassLoader.defineClass(URLClassLoader.java:256)
at java.net.URLClassLoader.access$000(URLClassLoader.java:56)
at java.net.URLClassLoader$1.run(URLClassLoader.java:195)
at java.security.AccessController.doPrivileged(Native Method)
at java.net.URLClassLoader.findClass(URLClassLoader.java:188)
at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(ClassLoader.java:307)
at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(ClassLoader.java:252)
at test.misc.TestJarLoading.main(TestJarLoading.java:22)
I have searched on the net and scratched my head but can't really arrive at any conclusion as to why this exception is thrown and that too - only sometimes, not always.
I need your experience and expertise to understand this. What's wrong with this code? Please help!!
Let me know if you need any more info. Thanks for looking!

For everyone's benefit, let me summarize the real problem and the solution that worked for me.
As Ryan pointed out, there is a bug in JVM, which affects Windows Platform. URLClassLoader does not close the open jar files after it opens them for loading classes, effectively locking the jar files. The jar files can't be deleted or replaced.
The solution is simple: close the open jar files after they've been read. However, to get a handle to the open jar files, we need to use reflection since the properties we need to traverse down are not public. So we traverse down this path
URLClassLoader -> URLClassPath ucp -> ArrayList<Loader> loaders
JarLoader -> JarFile jar -> jar.close()
The code to close the open jar files can be added to a close() method in a class extending URLClassLoader:
public class MyURLClassLoader extends URLClassLoader {
public PluginClassLoader(URL[] urls, ClassLoader parent) {
super(urls, parent);
}
/**
* Closes all open jar files
*/
public void close() {
try {
Class clazz = java.net.URLClassLoader.class;
Field ucp = clazz.getDeclaredField("ucp");
ucp.setAccessible(true);
Object sunMiscURLClassPath = ucp.get(this);
Field loaders = sunMiscURLClassPath.getClass().getDeclaredField("loaders");
loaders.setAccessible(true);
Object collection = loaders.get(sunMiscURLClassPath);
for (Object sunMiscURLClassPathJarLoader : ((Collection) collection).toArray()) {
try {
Field loader = sunMiscURLClassPathJarLoader.getClass().getDeclaredField("jar");
loader.setAccessible(true);
Object jarFile = loader.get(sunMiscURLClassPathJarLoader);
((JarFile) jarFile).close();
} catch (Throwable t) {
// if we got this far, this is probably not a JAR loader so skip it
}
}
} catch (Throwable t) {
// probably not a SUN VM
}
return;
}
}
(This code was taken from the second link that Ryan posted. This code is also posted on the bug report page.)
However, there's a catch: For this code to work and be able to get a handle to the open jar files to close them, the loader used to load the classes from the file by URLClassLoader implementation has to be a JarLoader. Looking at the source code of URLClassPath (method getLoader(URL url)), I noticed that it uses a JARLoader only if the file string used to create the URL does not end in "/". So, the URL must be defined like this:
URL jarUrl = new URL("file:" + file.getAbsolutePath());
The overall class loading code should look something like this:
void loadAndInstantiate() {
MyURLClassLoader cl = null;
try {
File file = new File("C:\\jars\\sample.jar");
String classToLoad = "com.abc.ClassToLoad";
URL jarUrl = new URL("file:" + file.getAbsolutePath());
cl = new MyURLClassLoader(new URL[] {jarUrl}, getClass().getClassLoader());
Class loadedClass = cl.loadClass(classToLoad);
Object o = loadedClass.getConstructor().newInstance();
} finally {
if(cl != null)
cl.close();
}
}
Update: JRE 7 has introduced a close() method in the class URLClassLoader which may have solved this issue. I haven't verified it.

This behaviour is related to a bug in the jvm
2 workarounds are documented here

Starting from Java 7, you indeed have a close() method in URLClassLoader but it is not enough to release completely the jar files if you call directly or indirectly methods of type ClassLoader#getResource(String), ClassLoader#getResourceAsStream(String) or ClassLoader#getResources(String). Indeed by default, the JarFile instances are automatically stored into the cache of JarFileFactory in case we call directly or indirectly one of the previous methods and those instances are not released even if we call java.net.URLClassLoader#close().
So a hack is still needed in this particular case even with Java 1.8.0_74, here is my hack https://github.com/essobedo/application-manager/blob/master/src/main/java/com/github/essobedo/appma/core/util/Classpath.java#L83 that I use here https://github.com/essobedo/application-manager/blob/master/src/main/java/com/github/essobedo/appma/core/DefaultApplicationManager.java#L388. Even with this hack, I still had to call the GC explicitly to fully release the jar files as you can see here https://github.com/essobedo/application-manager/blob/master/src/main/java/com/github/essobedo/appma/core/DefaultApplicationManager.java#L419

This is an update tested on java 7 with success. Now the URLClassLoader works fine for me
MyReloader
class MyReloaderMain {
...
//assuming ___BASE_DIRECTORY__/lib for jar and ___BASE_DIRECTORY__/conf for configuration
String dirBase = ___BASE_DIRECTORY__;
File file = new File(dirBase, "lib");
String[] jars = file.list();
URL[] jarUrls = new URL[jars.length + 1];
int i = 0;
for (String jar : jars) {
File fileJar = new File(file, jar);
jarUrls[i++] = fileJar.toURI().toURL();
System.out.println(fileJar);
}
jarUrls[i] = new File(dirBase, "conf").toURI().toURL();
URLClassLoader classLoader = new URLClassLoader(jarUrls, MyReloaderMain.class.getClassLoader());
// this is required to load file (such as spring/context.xml) into the jar
Thread.currentThread().setContextClassLoader(classLoader);
Class classToLoad = Class.forName("my.app.Main", true, classLoader);
instance = classToLoad.newInstance();
Method method = classToLoad.getDeclaredMethod("start", args.getClass());
Object result = method.invoke(instance, args);
...
}
Close and Restart the ClassReloader
then update your jar and call
classLoader.close();
then you can restart the app with the new version.
Do not include your jar into your base class loader
Do not include your jar into your base class loader "MyReloaderMain.class.getClassLoader()" of the "MyReloaderMain", in other words develop 2 project with 2 jars one for "MyReloaderMain" and the other one for your real application without dependency between the two, or you will not able to understand who i loading what.

The error is still present in jdk1.8.0_25 on Windows. Although #Nicolas' answer helps, I hit a ClassNotFound for sun.net.www.protocol.jar.JarFileFactory when running it on WildFly, and several vm crashes while debugging some box tests...
Therefore I ended up extracting the part of the code which deals with loading and unloading, to an external jar. From the main code I just call this with java -jar.... all looks fine for now.
NOTE: Windows does release the locks on the loaded jar files when the jvm exits, that is why this works.

In principle, a class that has already been loaded cannot be reloaded with the same classloader.
For a new load, it is necessary to create a new classloader and thus load the class.
Using URLClassLoader has one problem and that is that the jar file remains open.
If you have multiple classes loaded from one jar file by different instances of URLClassLoader and you change the jar file at runtime, you will usually get this error: java.util.zip.ZipException: ZipFile invalid LOC header (bad signature). The error may be different.
In order for the above errors not to occur, it is necessary to use the close method on all URLClassLoaders using the given jar file. But this is a solution that actually leads to a restart of the entire application.
A better solution is to modify the URLClassLoader so that the contents of the jar file are loaded into the RAM cache. This no longer affects other URLClassloaders that read data from the same jar file. The jar file can then be freely changed while the application is running. For example, you can use this modification of URLClassLoader for this purpose: in-memory URLClassLoader