Deleting Java's "temporary internet files"

Question

In the Java Control Panel on Windows there are settings for "temporary internet files" wherein all the applets and webstart stuff is cached. For certain users of our application this caching doesn't work properly and they need to delete all the files through the control panel before our webstart application will update itself properly.

Overlooking the other implications of doing so, is there anyway we can programmatically delete the temporary file cache when we do an update, preferably through Java and without resorting to any batch file or Windows hackery quackery?

Answer 1

For a web start application (such as you're talking about):

javaws -uninstall

You can also uninstall a specific Web Start application by providing the URL to the JNLP on the -unintall command line.

When I've run into this problem, the root cause was a web server incorrectly applying an incorrect expiration date for the Web Start's JAR files. When I corrected this problem with my Apache HTTPD configuration, I stopped having the Web Start application not always update. It's worth checking out.

Answer 2

Take a look at the jnlp download service api