Importing third-party java libraries

Question

I have just downloaded jakarta httpclient and am trying to get it to work with a program I am writing. Are there instructions somewhere on importing third-party libraries? I've searched these forums, the tutorials, and even google and haven't found any. Or can someone just tell me how to do it?
Basically I have a folder with a list of java files. I run javac program.java to compile and then java program. The one thing I have seen in these forums is about setting the classpath, but no specifics on what to set it to. Basically I have a folder with the source called java. The only subfolder there is org, the next subfolder is apache, next is commons, then httpcliet, and then all the actual java files with a few other folders with the java files in them. It gives examples in the folder src which is the parent of java. In src there is a folder called examples. The relevent import statements are:
import org.apache.commons.httpclient.HttpClient;
import org.apache.commons.httpclient.MultiThreadedHttpConnectionManager;
import org.apache.commons.httpclient.methods.GetMethod;These are all valid files under the folder system, yet it gives me the error : package org.apache.commons.httpclient does not exist for the first 2 and package org.apache.commons.httpclient.methods does not exist.
There are also errors resulting from it not recognizing the import statements. Can someone help me please?

Answer 1

I had a choice between source and binary, if I
download the binary, should I put the jar file inthe
folder with the rest of my *.java files?You can, but I'd advise against it because it gets
messy and confusing.
Or do I have
to put the whole folder (with the API, liscense,
readme, etc. in it) in the same folder as MY codeor
do I just need the .jar file? You just need the jar file. Don't unpack the jar
file; the standard java libraries know how to deal
with a jar file just fine.
More-or-less standard practice would be to create a
directory hierarchy like this:
project_name/
project_name/lib/
project_name/src/
project_name/classes/
Put the jar files in project_name/lib. Put your java
source files (the ones that you're creating) into
src/, and when you compile, put the compiled class
files into classes/ (use the -d option to javac to do
that). When you compile and run, include both the
classes/ directory and the jar files (note: NOT the
lib/ directory, specify the individual .jar files) in
the classpath.So do I need the absolute path of the .jar file? If I were to put it in the same folder as my source could I just specify as
javac -classpath whateverjar.jar MyFile.java
or do I have to do javac -classpath C:\my folder\my other folder\etc\projectName\lib\whateverjar.jar MyFile.java?
Thanks