Loading images from jar

Question

Found a good solution that works from running in command line, i.e java -jar or normally or using web start and not getting missing image URL loading from jar
It deserves some dukes :) Also, someone can improve on it to make sure it's 100%
Asume the function is in a package AWTUtilities class
Many forums provide close solution but they all forget the vital replacing back slash with forward slash when reading from jar!! :)
That's what got me stump for a good day trying to figure why it should load the images, but it's not...
Regards
Abraham Khalil
   // The subtlety in getResource() is that it uses the
   // Class loader of the class used to get the rousource.
   // This means that if you want to load a resource from
   // your JAR file, then you better use a class in the
   // JAR file.
   public static Image getImageResource( String name ) throws java.io.IOException {
      return getImageResource( AWTUtilities.class, name );
   public static Image getImageResource(Class base, String name ) throws java.io.IOException {
      if (name != null) {
         Image result = null;
         // A must, else won't pick the path properly within the jar!!
         // For file system forward or backward slash is not an issue
         name = name.replace('\\', '/');
         // For loading from file system using getResource via base class
         URL imageURL = base.getResource( name );
         // For loading from jar starting from root path using getResource via base class
         if (imageURL == null) {
            imageURL = base.getResource("/" + name );
         // For loading from file system using getSystemResource
         if (imageURL == null) {
            imageURL = ClassLoader.getSystemResource( name );
         // For loading from jar starting from root path using getSystemResource
         if (imageURL == null) {
            imageURL = ClassLoader.getSystemResource("/" + name );
         // Found the image url? If so, create the image and return it...
         if ( imageURL != null ) {
            Toolkit tk = Toolkit.getDefaultToolkit();
            result = tk.createImage( (ImageProducer) imageURL.getContent() );
         return result;
      else {
         return null;

Answer 1

The problem is that you use the wrong classloader. The system default classloader is the one that launched the webstart utility. It doesn't contain your classes or jars. You have to get hold of the classloader for your classes.
Here's my solution as a schetch: probably it won't compile but you get the idea:
// 1: get hold of the classloader for my classes:
// - this class cannot possibly be loaded by anyone else:
Object dummy = new Object(){
public String toString() { return super.toString(); }
ClassLoader cl = dummy.getClass().getClassLoader();
// 2: get an inputstream to read resource from from jar:
InputStream is = cl.getResourceAsStream("images/myimage.gif");
// 3: create image from inputstream
// can be done in many different ways using tmp-files etc.
ImageIcon icon = new ImageIcon(is);
Image img = icon.getImage();