Java in a Nutshell, 5th Edition

Name

ClassLoader

Synopsis

This class is the abstract superclass of objects that know how to load Java classes into a Java VM. Given a ClassLoader object, you can dynamically load a class by calling the public loadClass( ) method, specifying the full name of the desired class. You can obtain a resource associated with a class by calling getResource( ), getResources( ), and getResourceAsStream( ). Many applications do not need to use ClassLoader directly; these applications use the Class.forName( ) and Class.getResource( ) methods to dynamically load classes and resources using the ClassLoader object that loaded the application itself.

In order to load classes over the network or from any source other than the class path, you must use a custom ClassLoader object that knows how to obtain data from that source. A java.net.URLClassLoader is suitable for this purpose for almost all applications. Only rarely should an application need to define a ClassLoader subclass of its own. When this is necessary, the subclass should typically extend java.security.SecureClassLoader and override the findClass( ) method. This method must find the bytes that comprise the named class, then pass them to the defineClass( ) method and return the resulting Class object. In Java 1.2 and later, the findClass( ) method must also define the Package object associated with the class, if it has not already been defined. It can use getPackage( ) and definePackage( ) for this purpose. Custom subclasses of ...