JAR Files

Java Archive (JAR) files are Java’s suitcases. They are the standard and portable way to pack up all the parts of your Java application into a compact bundle for distribution or installation. You can put whatever you want into a JAR file: Java class files, serialized objects, data files, images, audio, etc. A JAR file can also carry one or more digital signatures that attest to its integrity and authenticity. A signature can be attached to the file as a whole or to individual items in the file. The Java runtime system can load class files directly from an archive in your CLASS PATH, as described earlier. Nonclass files (data, images, etc.) contained in your JAR file can also be retrieved from the classpath by your application using the getResource() method(We'll discuss about it). Using this facility, your code doesn’t have to know whether any resource is in a plain file or a member of a JAR archive. Whether a given class or data file is an item in a JAR file or an individual file on the classpath, you can always refer to it in a standard way and let Java’s class loader resolve the location. Items stored in JAR files are compressed with the standard ZIP file compression. Compression makes downloading classes over a network much faster. A quick survey of the standard Java distribution shows that a typical class file shrinks by about 40 percent when it is compressed. Text files such as HTML or ASCII containing English words often compress to one-tenth their original size or less. (On the other hand, image files don’t normally get smaller when compressed as most common image formats are themselves a compression format.) Java also has an archive format called Pack200, which is optimized specifically for Java class bytecode and can achieve over four times greater compression of Java classes than ZIP alone. We’ll talk about Pack200 later.