Java Swing: Displaying images from within a Jar

Question

When running a Java app from eclipse my ImageIcon shows up just fine.

But after creating a jar the path to the image obviously gets screwed up.

Is there a way to extract an image from the jar at runtime so I can then open it up? Or, is there a better way to do this?

I'd like to distribute a single jar file if possible.

Answer 1

You can try something like:

InputStream stream = this.getClass().getClassLoader().getResourceAsStream("/images/image.jpg");

In your JAR file, you might have a directory structure of:

MyJAR.jar
- com (class files in here)
- images
----image.jpg

Answer 2

To create an ImageIcon from an image file within the same jars your code is loaded:

new javax.swing.ImageIcon(getClass().getResource("myimage.jpeg")

Class.getResource returns a URL of a resource (or null!). ImageIcon has a constructors that load from a URL.

To construct a URL for a resource in a jar not on your "classpath", see the documentation for java.net.JarURLConnection.