ImageIcon fails to load image from known source

Question

Hello,
I have tried multiple ways to use ImageIcon to place an image within a JFrame.
I have tried to place directly on the JFrame using drawImage and within a JLabel.
I have tried multiple sources such as fully qualified regular files to the root and filenames relative to the current project. I have also tried using URLs.
I am executing this project from Eclipse and have used both Windows and the Mac.
My debugging code tells me the load of the image is not successful.
Thank you for your help with this problem.
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import java.awt.*;
import java.awt.event.*;
import java.net.*;
import java.io.*;
import javax.swing.*;
   class Main extends JFrame implements ItemListener {
     Image image;
     Image imagecopy;
     String imagefile;
     URL imageurl;
     String strslnts = "Slavery notes";
     String strnsnts = "North & South notes";
     String strwpnts = "Weapons notes";
     String strbtnts = "Battle notes";
     int frwidth, frheight, il, it;
     List stuslist;
     Main() {
          super("The Civil War as Presented by Garrett Neuman");
          imagefile = "file:///Users/teacher/Desktop/garrett/CivilWar/flags.gif";       
          image = getToolkit().getImage(imagefile);
          setIconImage(image);
          frwidth = 1024;
          frheight = 735;   //leave room for task bar
           WindowEventHandler weh = new WindowEventHandler();
           addWindowListener(weh);
           Insets insets = getInsets();
          il = insets.left; it = insets.top;
           setSize(frwidth, frheight);
          setResizable(false);
          try {imageurl = (new URL("http://www.ariped.com/01-pat_metheny_01.jpg"));}
          catch (MalformedURLException e) {stuslist.add("malformed url");};
          ImageIcon icon = new ImageIcon(imageurl);
          int fstatus = icon.getImageLoadStatus();
//         stuslist.add(String.valueOf(fstatus));
          JLabel iconLabel = new JLabel(icon);
          setContentPane(iconLabel);
          setVisible(true);

Answer 1

Thanks for the advice on SSCCE. This cracked the case for me and will be useful in the future.
One observation I gained from testing is that even regular files seem to need to go through the URL process for the image load to be successful.
This may or may not be useful but the following code caused the image load to fail. I tried commenting out the code line by line from the bottom up but the mere presence of the definition caused failure of the image load.
        public void paint(Graphics g) {
              int iwidth = image.getWidth(null);
              int frmidd = (il + frwidth - iwidth) / 2;     
              g.drawImage(image, frmidd , (it + 30), null);
              g.drawRect(75, 175, 210, 230);
         }