Where are jar files downloaded to with Applet?

Question

I have an Applet and am using archive attribute in my applet tag to specify jar files needed by the applet. eg: "archive=myclassfiles.jar, foo.jar". Assume that myclassesfiles.jar has classes needed by the Applet and Foo.jar has some text files or xml files. Assume that Applet is signed.
My question: I am assuming that all jar files are downloaded to the client when the Applet is started. Is this correct? If so, how can I open and read Foo.jar file within the Applet? I dont know the path to that file, that is, I dont know where on the client that Jar file has been downloaded to. Would the following work:
URL aUrl = (new File("Foo.jar")).toURL();
String path = aUrl.toString();
would path point to the correct location of Foo.jar?

Answer 1

They are downloaded to the client, and stored in a cache. I'm not sure they are readable from within the applet, however. But there are 2 solutions, depending on what you are doing.
1) You want to get some images or other resources from the Jar file. Then do this:
URL url = appletClass.getClass().getResource("myimage.jpg");
ImageIcon icon = new ImageIcon(url);
where appletClass is the applet object, and the resource ("myimage.jpg" is the relative path to the image in the Jar file.
2) You want to muck around with the Jar (read it). Well you can't write to it that easily in an applet, as you can't access the file system without a signed applet, or you would have to POST it back to the web server via HTTP file upload. But if you want to just read it and get stuff out of it, you can always just do this:
URL url = new URL(getDocumentBase(), "foo.jar");
and then open the URLConnection for that URL and read the Jar in.