Reflecting classes not in classpath

[Nickolay Kolev]

Hi all,
Is there a way to load a class fo reflection wich is not in the classpath, but rather in the same directory as the reflecting class?
I am trying to load a class and examine its swing components...
Any tips on how this could be achieved?
Many thanks,
Nickolay Kolev

[Ilja Preuss]

I think you will need to use a custom ClassLoader for this. Don't know much more about it, though...

[Dave Landers]

You can use something like this:

/** ClassLoader to load classes from a specific dir.
 * Class will be in dir/com/foo/Bar.class
 */
class MyClassLoader extends ClassLoader
{
    private File dir;
    public MyClassLoader( File dir )
    {
        this.dir = dir;
    }
    protected Class findClass(String name)
        throws ClassNotFoundException
    {
        try
        {
            File f = new File( dir,
                               name.replace('.', File.separatorChar) + ".class" )
;
            byte[] b = new byte[ (int) f.length() ];
            FileInputStream is = new FileInputStream( f );
            is.read( b );
            return defineClass(name, b, 0, b.length);
        }
        catch (IOException e)
        {
            throw new ClassNotFoundException(name, e);
        }
    }
}

And load classes like this:

ClassLoader cl = new MyClassLoader( new File( where ) );
Class clazz = Class.forName( "com.foo.Bar", true, cl );

Enjoy!
[ October 30, 2002: Message edited by: Dave Landers ]

[Junaid Bhatra]

Instead of writing your own Classloader, I guess you could use the built-in URLClassLoader for the same purpose:

URL[] urls = new URL[]{new URL("file:myDir/")};
URLClassLoader loader = new URLClassLoader(urls);
Class c1 = Class.forName("com.foo.myClass", true, loader);