Packaging and listing multiple resources

Question

Hello,
I want to include a directory containing a large number of wav files in an executable Jar file and access them in my program. The number of files is very large and it would be impractical, let alone inelegant, to write code to load each file individually by name, or from a text file or otherwise. In the past I have not needed to package such media files, and have managed by listing the files in a directory and then iterating through the list to load them, as follows:
File f = new File(directoryName);
File[] myFiles = directoryName.listFiles();
for(int i = 0; i < myFiles.length; i++) {
//try to load the file
Is there any way I can do this using URL and ClassLoader, or in some other way that does not depend on the absolute location of the directory? It should also work in an Applet loaded in a browser.
Many thanks.

Answer 1

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I want to include a directory containing a large number of wav files in an executable Jar file and access them in my program. >Side note: it is generally a good idea to keep compressed formats separate to other media types and classes, and to specify 'no compression' on those Jars. The Zip compression format is not good for compressing such files that already use compression.
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..The number of files is very large and it would be impractical, let alone inelegant, to write code to load each file individually by name, or from a text file or otherwise. >Why? It is trivial to write code that can read the names, and Ant can produce the file at build time.
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... It should also work in an Applet loaded in a browser.>This project would be well suited to being launched using webstart. By specifying the media Jars as 'lazy' download, the app. would arrive on screen much faster, then you might use the DownloadService to download them in a background thread or 'as needed'.