Eclipse Cookbook

1.8. Creating a Java Class

Problem

You want to create a new Java class in an existing Java project.

Solution

When you have the Java perspective open and have a Java project selected in the Package Explorer, you can create new classes in Eclipse in several ways. You can use the toolbar item with the circled C icon, you can select File→ New→ Class, or you can right-click a project in the Package Explorer and select New→ Class in the context menu. All these methods open the New Java Class dialog.

Discussion

The New Java Class dialog is shown in Figure 1-9.

Figure 1-9. Creating a new Java class

Over the previous few recipes, we’ve been developing a short Java project, FirstApp. Now we’re going to use the following code to display a message in that project:

public class FirstApp
{
  public static void main(String[] args)
  {
    System.out.println("Stay cool.");
  }
}

Creating Java classes is a fundamental skill for most Eclipse developers, so I’m going to cover the basics here. Note the options in this dialog: you can set a class’s access specifier as public, private, or protected; you can make the class abstract or final; you can specify the new class’s superclass (java.lang.Object is the default); and you can specify which, if any, interfaces it implements. Class creation is covered in more detail in Chapter 3.

In this book, you’ll put examples into Java packages to avoid any conflict with ...