Applet codebase problem

Question

Hi.
I've tried using Tor Norbye's directions for dynamically putting an applet in a webpage (http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/tor?entry=applets_in_your_webapps) and it works.
What I would like to do is to put the source code for the applet in a package. I am using a package name of "applettest" and the class file ends up in the WEB-INF/classes/applettest directory when compiled. Here is what I am setting the foo string to:
public String getFoo() {
String str = new String("<applet codebase=\"WEB-INF/classes\" code=\"applettest.HelloWorldJApplet\" width=\"300\" height=\"300\"> </applet>");
this.setFoo(str);
return this.foo;
and the applet ends up in the browser source as:
<applet codebase="WEB-INF/classes" code="applettest.HelloWorldJApplet" width="300" height="300"> </applet>
This doesn't work and I have played around with several variants of this.
Anyone have any thoughts or suggestions?
Thanks, Bob

Answer 1

Bob,
for a resource (including an applet class) to be directly accessible (ie. downloadable) by a browser the resource must be put outside WEB-INF directory. This is mandated by servlet specification (in version 2.3 for example it is in section SRV 9.5) :
<spec>
A special directory exists within the application hierarchy named �WEB-INF�.
This directory contains all things related to the application that aren�t in the
document root of the application. The WEB-INF node is not part of the public
document tree of the application. No file contained in the WEB-INF directory may be served directly to a client by the container
</spec>
There is of course an indirect way of serving a resource from under WEB-INF to a browser - to have a servlet that will take a relative path to requested resource as a parameter and will stream the resource back.