Client.jar Contents!

[Vikas Sood]

Hi Friends,
I have created a client.jar file which will be used to run the client application.I have also made a client usermanual which will lie in the root of submission jar file and will also be available as online help.But the problem arises from the fact that as the help file and all the images are lying in the root and are not part of the client.jar file,any movement of client .jar from the root submission directory makes these image and html file unavailabe for client.
Can something be done here.
Kindly comment
VikasSood

[Nate Johnson]

Originally posted by Vikas Sood:
Can something be done here.

You can put the files in the jar and use a method like this (this is for images, but the same would go for html files, etc)...

  
    /**
     * Returns an image from the jar file.
     *
     * @param name the name of the image.
     * @return an image from the jar file.
     */
    private Image getImageFromJar(String name) {
        URL iconURL = ClassLoader.getSystemResource(name);
        return Toolkit.getDefaultToolkit().getImage(iconURL);
    }

[Andrew Monkhouse]

Hi Vikas
Nate's solution is good. I didnt do this because I was using HTML pages for user manuals. This meant that I could display them in online help as well as allowing the user to view them using any browser they liked. If I had packaged them into the jar file, the user would not have easily been able to view them using their preferred browser.
You could mention somewhere in your client application documentation that if the client jar file was moved, then the documentation directory should be copied to the same directory or online help wouldnt work.
Perhaps also put a comment that it would only be a minor modification to your code to allow the user to specify the online help directory on the command line or in a configuration fle (if this is true of course). This would then show that you have thought about the issue and how to fix it.
In my online help application (it was part of my client app, but could also be run standalone) I also had a default page if the page the user specified could not be loaded. It basically stated that the (named) page could not be loaded, and suggested that the user check that the documentation directory had not been deleted, and was in the same directory as the client.jar file.
Regards, Andrew