Finding image in jar file

Question

This took me by surprise:
I assumed that JVM would find image files, e.g. used in (JFrame).setIconImage(img) when these images are inside a jar file with the same path. I am using something like:
Image   icon=jframe.getToolkit().getImage(img_path);what works when running JVM with class files and images in directories, but not when in jar file. img_path is relative. Classes will be found as expected, but not the image files!
Do I do something wrong?
Thomas
Edited by: ThomasH_usually on Oct 1, 2008 11:48 AM

Answer 1

I encountered this same problem before, whereby I wanted to be able to run my code from within an IDE (find image files from the file system) for development, and also to be able to run my code from within an executable jar (find image files from inside the jar) for release. I used the following utility method to get an image URL:
public static URL getImageUrl(String fileName)
    // try to get the URL as a system resource
    URL url = ClassLoader.getSystemResource(fileName);
    if (url == null)
        // try to get the URL directly from the filename
        try
            url = new URL("file:" + fileName);
        catch (Exception e)
    return url;
}You can then use the resulting URL instead of the image path, in your case as follows:
Image   icon=jframe.getToolkit().getImage(Utils.getImageUrl(img_path));Paul.