Develop Reference

Finding a resource in Java

I am developing a Java application which displays a big amount of images. The problem is I can't figure out how to make Java find these images.
I have followed several tutorials and answers here at Stackoverflow, but I still haven't managed to find a solution that works regardless of OS (Linux or Windows) and running method (embedded on eclipse or exported jar file). This might be due to the fact that I am still a newbie, though.
I have created a class, which I call myIcon and through this class I mean to access all of these images. In the following code, I want to pass the string "resources/icon/image.gif" to the function getIconPath. The output should be a ImageIcon of this image, since this file exists. Despite that, if I pass to this function the path to an image that doesn't exist, null should be returned. In this case, my application will display a default image (a red x).
public class MyIcon {
// some other functions and properties
private static final ImageIcon getIconPath(String path) {
File f = new File(path);
if (f.exists()) {
return new ImageIcon(path, "");
} else {
return null;
}
}
}
The resources folder is a sibling to the src folder in my directory structure. That is, both resources and src are subfolders of the root directory.
When I run the code above, no image is ever found. The default image is thus always displayed and getIconPath returns null.
I am also aware of the getResource method of ClassLoader, but I still don't really understand how these things should be used.

While running in eclipse, you should print out f.getAbsolutePath(). It probably doesn't point to your file. More generally, you want to access the file as a resource. See:
https://docs.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/deployment/webstart/retrievingResources.html

There are two parts to this - making sure that when you build a jar, the images are part of it, and accessing a resource within the jar.
For the first part, I am guessing that whatever you're using to build a jar, it will put your images into the META-INF folder, which should work without too much issue (if its not there, or in with the Java class/source in the generated jar, that might cause the lookup to fail)
There is another Stack Overflow Post for the second part. The key is to make sure the images you want to load are on the classpath.
Hope this helps!

If resources is in classpath, you can find for the image at classpath, using getResource(String name) or getResourceAsStream(String name).
However, in a simple Java Project, even adding resources to build path, like this:
it will just put the folder content, in other words, just icon/..., to bin folder, something like this:
So, since resources isn't in classpath, just icon, to retrieve the images, you'll need to inform as path only /icon/image.gif, like this:
URL url = YourClass.class.getResource("/icon/image.gif");
ImageIcon icon = new ImageIcon(url);

Opening image asset Java JDK 8

I am attempting to load an image called Default.png stored within the project and draw it onto a canvas. I am well aware of ImageIO.read however no matter what path I give it, I can't seem to load it. Where should I put the image? I have tried putting it in a separate folder calles "res," putting it into assets.author.mypackagename.textures, but no matter what I do I cannot seem to find the right location and how to access it. Any help is appreciated, comment for further specifics.

Actually the resources are loaded in the classpath relative to the current package. If /com/daniel/project/src/ is in your classpath, and images are in /com/daniel/project/src/image then use:
ImageIO.read( ClassLoader.getSystemResource( "image/Default.png" ) );
But the src folder is not included in the classpath by IDEs generally. Try adding the image to the bin folder.

If You have it in a separate folder called res you can load the image by doing this:
ImageIO.read(this.getClass().getResource("/Default.png"));
you can also do something like:
ImageIO.read(new File("res/Default.png"));
The second method doesn't need the picture to be in another folder, but for me it's cleaner that way.

Getting resources works from NetBeans Execution Context but not working when jar is executed from comand line

I have a code where i create Java Actions and try to associate Icons with them. One snapshot of code is
FileOpenCommand fileOpen = new FileOpenCommand(this);
fileOpen.putValue("ImageOnly", false);
fileOpen.putValue(Action.NAME, "Open");
fileOpen.putValue(Action.SMALL_ICON, new ImageIcon(getClass().getResource("../resources/File-Open-icon24x24.png")));
fileOpen.putValue(Action.SHORT_DESCRIPTION, "Opens the existing file.");
fileOpen.putValue("Group", "File");
fileOpen.putValue(Action.ACCELERATOR_KEY, KeyStroke.getKeyStroke(KeyEvent.VK_O, ActionEvent.CTRL_MASK));
this.commands.put("FileOpen", fileOpen);
The accent is on the line where I try to set the Action.SMALL_ICON property to the action. This works when executed in NetBeans environment either in debug or release mode. But when I've tried to execute jar file from the command line, it fails with exception.
Any idea? Anything to do with classpath? Resources folder is put as the package inside the main package.
Thanks in Advance!

I'm not entirely sure what exception is being thrown in your case, although assuming it is a NullPointerException, IOException, or IllegalArgumentException deriving from
fileOpen.putValue(Action.SMALL_ICON, new ImageIcon(getClass().getResource("../resources/File-Open-icon24x24.png")));
Your issue should be resolved simply by adding getClassLoader() between the getClass() and getResource(), like so:
fileOpen.putValue(Action.SMALL_ICON, new ImageIcon(getClass().getClassLoader().getResource("../resources/File-Open-icon24x24.png")));
Additionally, you must be exact in your filenames, specifically the extension. In this case, you are accessing File-Open-icon24x24.png, which will work perfectly fine regardless of whether the actual file is extended by png or PNG within Netbeans, but once exported the extension case matters.
Lastly, if neither of those changes resolve your problem, I would check your filepath, as there is most likely a logical error somewhere down the line.
When using embedded resources in Netbeans, you should have a resources folder containing additional folder or whatever data you need, which you seem to have, but this folder should be located inside the Netbeans project's src folder. getClass().getResource() returns the directory at the top of the package line, meaning if your class package is com.example.code, then the compiler will look for files/folder on the same level as com. Opening the Netbeans src folder you should see the initial com folder. Your resource folder should be placed directly next to that folder, as then it will be properly embedded in the jar file export.
In your code your path is ../resources/File-Open-icon24x24.png, which confuses me as to why you begin with ... I cannot see your folder structure so I cannot give a precise answer on this note, but you may be accessing the wrong location, although I feel like you are not as you said your project runs correctly within Netbeans. However, your resource files may not be correctly encoding into the jar file due to placement as mentioned. To test what your jar file actually contains, make a copy of it (for safety reasons) and change the file extension from jar to zip. You can then look through its contents in Windows Explorer, and see its directory structure. Another debugging trick for folder structures is to create a text file at the URL you are trying to access to see where it is placed.

Java throwing NullPointerException when loading Images using getClass().getResource()

I have an Applet I'm trying to embed into a html file after packaging into a jar file.
Images are loaded in the main Applet Class with the following line
return getImage(getClass().getResource("/../content/"+path));
This works when running through eclipse but when I export it to a jar file I get a Null Pointer Exception. I've done some googling and I've tried to use getResourceAsStream with the following code
InputStream is = new BufferedInputStream(
getClass().getResourceAsStream("/../content/"+path));
return ImageIO.read(is);
but this doesn't work through eclipse.
Content is the top level directory of the images and path is the specified path to the required image. The applet is in a folder called game, which is at the same level as content

It was a comment now i answered it here (as OP said it did help): try putting the content into the same package as the class thats accessing the content and change the paths accordingly and see if that helps. If it does, its a problem with your paths.

I had the same issue. But solved it using :-
<ClassName>.class.getClass().getResource(urlString);
Hope this helps...

You could try this instead.
getClass().getClassLoader().getResourceAsStream(name)
Also, your path looks a bit weird. /.. basically means the parent directory of the root, which cannot possibly work.

Images are not displaying in jar but displaying in compiler?

I know, I know, this has been asked before. But every resource I've looked at uses IconImages while I just have plain Images.
Is there a different solution? Please help as I've been stuck researching and trying to figure this out for days now with no progress.
Image Floor = Toolkit.getDefaultToolkit().getImage("Floor.PNG");
EDIT: If I was to make sure the jar wouldn't compress and I created a seperate directory in the jar for images and put the correct file path, would this code work?

Toolkit#getImage(String s) looks for a file and likely your image is in the Jar and is now a resource not a file. Look to using resources for this.
Note that ImageIO.read(...) can accept an InputStream parameter the Class class has a method, getResourceAsStream(...) which can put the resource into a Stream that ImageIO can read. Give that a try.
Also, are you getting any error messages when you try what you're doing?

Make sure you know what your current directory is, and how it relates to the position of the files in your jar.
Here's how I would handle it.
1) Require there to be a file called "images.txt" in the directory with your jar (or bundle it into the jar.)
2) Make a file called "images.txt" with a format like `FLOOR:C:\\images\\floor.png`
3) Load this file into memory on load.
4) Load your images based on the entries in the file
This will give you the advantage of changing your images without changing your code if it's defined outside the jar :)
It's not loading because you're not putting the path to the images in the declaration. It expects the images to be wherever the jar is (notice there's no directories there)
You need to offload the definition of the file names to a file, or at the very least guarantee the relative position of the files.
Another good option is to put the images in the jar itself, say in an img directory, and reference them there. But then changes to the images require a new jar, which may not be desired for development purposes.

The getImage call is looking in the file system working directory, not inside the Jar file. This is why the jar file loads the images successfully when they are placed in the same directory outside the jar file. If the images are bundled in the jar file, they are no longer file system files to be accessed, but rather Jar file resources. There is a different way to load these, but sorry, I don't know it off the top of my head.

Check the extension of files. I had this problem because the extension was "PNG", when I changed it to "png", everything was ok.

You can't expect a JAR file to magically know where your images are. If you put a JAR file alone on the desktop, it's going to look for the files on the desktop! The code
getImage("Floor.png")
searches the current directory of the JAR (or source project) by default and you'd expect that if the JAR was in the same directory, it would work. If the JAR is on the desktop how does it know where Floor.png is? Of course, you can specify a hard-coded path
getImage("C:\Some Folder Path\Floor.png")
but then Floor.png has to be in C:\Some Folder Path\ for the JAR to work properly.
It sounds like what you really want to do is keep the images in the JAR file (which acts like a ZIP file). The tutorial on doing that is here:
http://download.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/uiswing/components/icon.html#getresource

And I know for ImageIcon you use: new javax.swing.ImageIcon(getClass().getResource("myimage.jpeg") but I have not found anything similar for plain Image.
<head-desk /> You should really get into reading the JavaDocs. Otherwise you are 'coding by magic'. Which generally won't work.
URL urlToImage = getClass().getResource("myimage.jpeg");
// If you need to support Java 1.3
Image image = Toolkit.getDefaultToolKit().getImage(urlToImage);
// If your users have dragged their JRE into this millennium
BufferedImage bufferedImage = ImageIO.read(urlToImage);