Re: Declaring Java classes and methods

Colin,

Be aware that custom class loaders are generally not expected
particularly in container-managed environments. You can run into all
kinds of difficult to debug situations when you load the same class from
multiple class loaders. It may work for you but I wouldn't use a
customer class loader to save typing on my classpath. Some reasons to
use a custom class loader are that you have something in your classes
you don't want anyone to find out about or you want to be able to reload
a class at will. A safe but effective alternative to add all Jars in a
directory is a shell script using something like:

#! /bin/qsh

cd $(dirname $0)

CLASSPATH=.
for i in lib/*.jar; do
  CLASSPATH=${CLASSPATH}:$i
done

echo CLASSPATH=${CLASSPATH}
export -s CLASSPATH=${CLASSPATH} 

java com.MyApp...

--David Morris

>>> colin.williams@xxxxxxxxxxxx 8/30/2004 1:25:59 PM >>>
Joe,

if you need to write a custom classloader, there are some articles on
the
IBM developerworks site that discuss this(assuming you havent done
this
before!).

I recently knocked up a custom classloader so that i could setup my
classpath dynamically, rather than setting using the RUNJVA command.

I had an application that used a component dependent on a lot of open
source
JARS, and I didnt want to type them all in to the classpath one by
one.
So I created custom classloader that I could point at a directory, and
it
would add all the jars to the classpath.

cheers
Colin.W