Resources from JAR files

Question

This is doubtless very simple stuff, but I nonetheless cannot figure out where I?m going wrong. I just need to open up some image files as icons in my program, and I?m trying to put all of the classes and resources in one jar file. I?m loading the image using getResource, and I have the images in a folder in the same place as my classes. Everything works fine when the files are separate, and the images load successfully. But then I put all the files into a jar (preserving the same hierarchy) and suddenly getResource returns NULL and of course the pictures don?t load. Is there anything else I ought to be doing?
Many thanks,
Ned

Answer 1

Do any other ideas occur to anyone?Clearly there's a mismatch between the path used to reference the images, and the path where they live. This is pretty standard code, I've used it dozens of times, and I'm sure that the other responders have as well. On the surface, what you're doing looks right, so that only leaves one possibility.
Two, actually: you aren't by any chance running this in an app-server or web-server?
Assuming you aren't, put some debugging statements in, like this (not compiled, and I can't remember your image paths):
    URL resourceUril = this.getClass().getResource("/some/path/here");
    System.out.println("trying to load image from: " + resourceURL);This will print out a URL in the form jar:/some/path/here. Now display the contents of your jarfile, with jar tvf JARFILE. You'll see whether the path reported by the getResource() call is a valid path in your jarfile.