How to get resources from jar-files

Question

Hi
in my app I load an image via the Toolkit.getImage() method.
Works fine if the app and the image are in folders on disk.
It fails to load the image, if the app (and the image) is packed in a jar file.
How can I get the image from there?
I try to get the image as follows:
String s = getClass().getResource("MyApp.class").getFile();
AppPath = s.substring(0,s.lastIndexOf("/"));
String PathToImages = "/images";
MyImage = (Image)Toolkit.getDefaultToolkit().getImage(AppPath+PathToImages+"/logo32.gif");The App starts and works, it just fails to load the images.
Any solutions??
thanx in advance
Herby

Answer 1

This is actually pretty easy. First a little background.
A Jar file is just a Zip file, with a few constructs for Java.
The getResource() method is used to create a mapping to data within the Jar file, but is actually not necessary after you know how the mapping works.
Just to give you an example of getResource:
// returned is a url to the resource you want from your Jar file.
URL myURL = MyClass.class.getResource("images/myimgage.gif");
// then you can use this URL to load the resource
Image img = getImage(myURL);If you were you look at the value of myURL you would see something similar to the followiing.
jar:http://www.mywebsite.com/mydir/myjarfile.jar!/images/myimage.gifJust to break it down for you.
The line always starts with the word jar:
Followed by the path to your jar file.
A sepearator !/
Then the file you are loading from the Jar file.
jar:     path_to_jar_file     !/     path_to_resource_in_jar_fileSo if you'd like, you could just create a URL object, and define the path to the object using the above method rather than using getResource.
Anyway, back to your code. What I would do is print out what you get for:AppPath+PathToImages+"/logo32.gif"I'm thinking you might be getting 2 "/" in your path because I think:AppPath = s.substring(0,s.lastIndexOf("/"));will leave the "/" at the end and the next line you add the "/" in front of the image directory name. So you my have the following for your image path.mypath//images