I am just revisiting the JVM concepts and was try to do a delegation check. Consider the below code
public class SrkDelegationDemo {
public static void main(String[] args) {
ClassLoader cl = ClassLoader.getSystemClassLoader();
while (true) {
System.out.println("ClassLoader is " + cl);
ClassLoader parent = cl.getParent();
if (parent == null) {
System.out.println("Last Classloader which has no parent = " + cl);
// This line should print Bootstrap
break;
}
cl = parent;
}
}
Output
ClassLoader is sun.misc.Launcher$AppClassLoader#ab770638
ClassLoader is sun.misc.Launcher$ExtClassLoader#75c10082
Last Classloader which has no parent = sun.misc.Launcher$ExtClassLoader#75c10082
I am expecting the BootstrapClassLoader as well from what I've read online, not sure of this.
I am using adopt-openjdk-with-openj9-jvm and JDK version is jdk8u212-b03
Bootstrap class loader has no corresponding java.lang.ClassLoader object; its implementation is inside JVM. Otherwise who will load java.lang.ClassLoader class?
As the specification of ClassLoader.getParent says,
Some implementations may use null to represent the bootstrap class
loader. This method will return null in such implementations if this
class loader's parent is the bootstrap class loader.
OpenJDK is exactly such implementation.
In another answer, I wrote the following code (Java 7):
public final class Foo
{
public static void main(final String... args)
{
final ClassLoader loader = Foo.class.getClassLoader();
final URL[] urLs = ((URLClassLoader) loader).getURLs();
for (final URL url : urLs) {
System.out.println(url);
System.out.println(Files.probeContentType(Paths.get(url.toURI())));
}
}
}
I had to cast the ClassLoader to URLClassLoader in order to have the .getURLs() method.
This is not the first time I've been doing it, and this cast has never failed for me.
Looking at the type hierarchy, I see that:
URLClassLoader -> SecureClassLoader -> ClassLoader
My question is why doesn't ClassLoader define .getURLs()? Are there concrete examples of class loaders being unable to return URLs?
Just search through grepcode. For example JBoss' ModuleClassLoader does not extend URLClassLoader
public class ClassScanner
{
// scan extraClasspath for specific classes
public List<Class<?>> scanClasspathForClass(String scanCriteria)
{
...
}
public static Class<?> reloadClass(Class<?> clazz, ClassLoader clazzLoader)
{
// Question: how to reload a loaded class (ClassScanner in this example) with a different arbitrary ClassLoader?
}
// an example of how reloadClass() would be used
// in real case, this function would be in different class
public List<Class<?>> scan(URL[] extraClasspath)
{
URLClassLoader urlClazzLoader = new URLClassLoader(extraClasspath, null);
Class<?> newClass = reloadClass(ClassScanner.class, urlClazzLoader);
return ((ClassScanner) newClass.newInstance()).scanClasspathForClass();
}
}
Above code demonstrates the question and why it is a question. I need to implement reloadClass(). I wonder if there is a reliable solution in Java 1.6. One useful reference would be Find where java class is loaded from.
Thanks for help!
Found myself the answer from http://www2.sys-con.com/itsg/virtualcd/java/archives/0808/chaudhri/index.html.
Basically what I need is to make one ClassLoader A to share its namespace with another ClassLoader B. The way I found to achieve this is to use the ClassLoader parent-delegation model. Here, ClassLoader A is the parent ClassLoader.
public List<Class<?>> scan(URL[] extraClasspath) throws Exception
{
URLClassLoader urlClazzLoader = new URLClassLoader(extraClasspath, ClassScanner.class.getClassLoader());
return urlClazzLoader.loadClass(ClassScanner.getName()).newInstance();
}
I have some class A:
public class A {
public A(String str) {
System.out.println("Create A instance: " + str);
}
public void methodA() {
System.out.println("#methodA1()");
}
}
And my class loader implementation:
public class MyClassLoader extends ClassLoader {
public MyClassLoader() {
super();
}
#Override
public synchronized Class<?> loadClass(String name)
throws ClassNotFoundException {
System.out.println("Load: " + name);
return super.loadClass(name);
}
}
And now I try to change default class loader in current thread:
import java.util.ArrayList;
import java.util.List;
public class ChangeLoaderTest {
public static void main(String[] args) {
// Save class loader so that we can restore later.
ClassLoader oldLoader = Thread.currentThread().getContextClassLoader();
MyClassLoader newLoader = new MyClassLoader();
try {
// Set new classloader.
Thread.currentThread().setContextClassLoader(newLoader);
// My class.
A a = new A("1");
a.methodA();
// Standard Java class.
List<Integer> list = new ArrayList<Integer>();
list.add(2);
list.add(3);
} finally {
// Restore.
Thread.currentThread().setContextClassLoader(oldLoader);
}
}
}
And ChangeLoaderTest output:
Create A instance: 1
#methodA1()
No one
Load: ...
Why? How I can change ClassLoader into some thread?
As Marko Topolnik points out the context classloader is for use by frameworks. To use the classloader yourself you have to call loadClass("somepackage.A") and then use the reflection API to create a new instance of A (Class.newInstance()).
You wont be able to use A or its methods in your source directly since the calling code does not know A - it uses a different classloader. An interface or baseclass of A that can be loaded by the normal classloader can be used to avoid reflection.
interface AIF{
void someMethod();
}
class A implements AIF{
public void someMethod(){}
}
public void test(){
MyLoader loader = new MyLoader();
Class cla = loader.loadClass("A");
AIF a = (AIF) cla.newInstance();
a.someMethod();
}
The contextClassLoader mechanisms is not used by the basic Java operations like new. It's only there so various frameworks can access the context class loader in charge and load resources, classes, etc. Java will always use the classloader that loaded the code that is executing. It's the one that you access via ChangeLoaderTest.class.getClassLoader() -- and there is nothing you can do about this one.
I think that what happens is that your application's class loader which is also your classloader's "parent" can locate A and load it. As a result your classloader will not be searched or used for loading A.
To be honest, I haven't much experience with classloaders but if you subclassed one that uses a URL for the path of the class (so that it can locate the class file) and the parent classloader can not load it (not part of classpath), your custom one will be used.
I'm looking into dynamic modification of classpath. I found one solution that works nicely but it does so using an explicit call to addURL(). (presumably at startup)
However, I would like to intercept the class-loading process at runtime to locate classes if the default classloader can't seem to find them. I tried to subclass ClassLoader so it just delegates findClass() and loadClass() to the default, and print out a debug line telling me these methods have been called, but they never seem to get called when my class uses dependent classes via implicit classloading, e.g.
// regular object instantiation with 'new'
BrowserLauncher launcher;
launcher = new BrowserLauncher();
// static methods
Foobar.doSomethingOrOther();
// Class.forName()
Class cl = Class.forName("foo.bar.baz");
// reflection on a Class object obtained statically
Class<Foobar> cl = Foobar.class;
// do something with cl, like call static methods or newInstance()
How does classloading work under these circumstances? (vs. the simpler case where Classloader.loadClass() is called explicitly)
Here's my attempt at a custom classloader, below. If I use DynClassLoader0.main() with an arguments list of {"some.package.SomeClass", "foo", "bar", "baz"}, and some.package.SomeClass references other classes found in external .jar files, using one of the methods listed above, why doesn't my DynClassLoader0's findClass() and loadClass() get called? The only time loadClass gets called is the explicit call to loadClass in the main() function below.
package com.example.test.classloader;
import java.lang.reflect.InvocationTargetException;
import java.lang.reflect.Method;
public class DynClassLoader0 extends ClassLoader {
public DynClassLoader0()
{
super();
}
public DynClassLoader0(ClassLoader parent)
{
super(parent);
}
public void runMain(String classname, String[] args) throws ClassNotFoundException, SecurityException, NoSuchMethodException, IllegalArgumentException, IllegalAccessException, InvocationTargetException
{
// [***] here we explicitly use our classloader.
Class<?> cl = loadClass(classname);
Method main = cl.getMethod("main", String[].class);
main.invoke(null, new Object[] {args});
}
#Override protected Class<?> findClass(String name) throws ClassNotFoundException
{
System.out.println("findClass("+name+")");
return super.findClass(name);
}
#Override public Class<?> loadClass(String name) throws ClassNotFoundException
{
System.out.println("loadClass("+name+")");
return super.loadClass(name);
}
static public void main(String[] args)
{
// classname, then args
if (args.length >= 1)
{
String[] classArgs = new String[args.length-1];
System.arraycopy(args, 1, classArgs, 0, args.length-1);
ClassLoader currentThreadClassLoader
= Thread.currentThread().getContextClassLoader();
DynClassLoader0 classLoader = new DynClassLoader0(currentThreadClassLoader);
// Replace the thread classloader - assumes
// you have permissions to do so
Thread.currentThread().setContextClassLoader(classLoader);
try {
classLoader.runMain(args[0], classArgs);
}
catch (Exception e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}
}
else
{
System.out.println("usage: DynClassLoader {classname} [arg0] [arg1] ...");
}
}
}
edit: I have looked through these questions already:
How do you change the CLASSPATH within Java?
Is it possible to “add” to classpath dynamically in java?
Adding files to java classpath at runtime.
edit: I thought what kdgregory is saying below is correct, that once I use my classloader explicitly (see line in code with [***] as a comment), all the code that executes from that class will cause implicit classloading from the same classloader. Yet my DynClassLoader0.loadClass() never gets called except during the outermost explicit call.
To quote from the ClassLoader JavaDoc:
The methods and constructors of
objects created by a class loader may
reference other classes. To determine
the class(es) referred to, the Java
virtual machine invokes the loadClass
method of the class loader that
originally created the class.
In other words, once you load a class, that class tries to load other classes through the classloader that loaded it. In a normal Java application, that is the system classloader, which represents the classpath passed to the JVM, or the boot classloader, used to load the JVM runtime.
Depending on your needs, there's a variant of Class.forName() that takes a classloader as an argument. If you use this to load a particular class, then references within that class should use the specified classloader.
Edit: I started tracing through your example, but decided it would just be easier to give my own. If you're going to write your own classloader, I suggest starting with the existing URLClassLoader, because it handles a lot of the behind-the-scenes stuff.
So, MyClassLoader takes a single JARfile/directory and loads classes for that directory alone. I've overridden the three methods called to load a class, and simply log their invocation (using System.err because it doesn't buffer output, unlike System.out).
My example uses a library that I'm currently working on; it was convenient, but you can pick any library you want as long as it's not already in your classpath.
The main() method loads a class via MyLoader. Then I invoke a method on that class, in a way that I know will throw an exception that's also part of the library. Note that I invoke the method by reflection: since the library is not on my Eclipse classpath, I couldn't compile it with an explicit reference.
When I run this program (under Sun JDK 1.5 for Linux), I see a lot of calls to loadClass(), both for classes in my library and for those on the classpath. This is expected: the ParseUtil class references a lot of other classes, and will use MyLoader (ie, its classloader) to load them. For those classes that MyLoader can't find locally, it delegates up the loader tree.
The exception is thrown, and when I print out its classloader I see that it's the same as the MyLoader instance I created. I also print out the loader for Exception.class, and it's null -- which the JavaDoc for Class.getClassLoader() says indicates the boot classloader.
import java.io.File;
import java.lang.reflect.InvocationTargetException;
import java.lang.reflect.Method;
import java.net.URL;
import java.net.URLClassLoader;
public class ClassLoaderExample
{
private static class MyClassLoader
extends URLClassLoader
{
public MyClassLoader(String path)
throws Exception
{
super(new URL[] { new File(path).toURL() });
}
#Override
protected Class<?> findClass(String name) throws ClassNotFoundException
{
System.err.println("findClass(" + name + ")");
return super.findClass(name);
}
#Override
protected synchronized Class<?> loadClass(String name, boolean resolve)
throws ClassNotFoundException
{
System.err.println("loadClass(" + name + "," + resolve + ")");
return super.loadClass(name, resolve);
}
#Override
public Class<?> loadClass(String name) throws ClassNotFoundException
{
System.err.println("loadClass(" + name + ")");
return super.loadClass(name);
}
}
public static void main(String[] argv)
throws Exception
{
ClassLoader myLoader = new MyClassLoader("/home/kgregory/Workspace/PracticalXml-1.1/target/classes/");
System.out.println("myLoader = " + myLoader);
Class<?> parseUtilKlass = myLoader.loadClass("net.sf.practicalxml.ParseUtil");
Method parseMethod = parseUtilKlass.getDeclaredMethod("parse", String.class);
try
{
parseMethod.invoke(null, "not at all valid XML");
}
catch (InvocationTargetException e)
{
Throwable ee = e.getCause();
System.out.println("exception:" + ee);
System.out.println("exception loader = " + ee.getClass().getClassLoader());
System.out.println("Exception.class loader = " + Exception.class.getClassLoader());
}
}
}
Edit #2, based on today's comments.
A classloader is expected to delegate requests to its parent before it attempts to fulfill the request itself (this is in the ClassLoader JavaDoc). There are a couple of benefits to this practice, foremost being that you won't unintentionally load incompatible instances of the same class.
J2EE classloaders amend this model: the classloader used to load a WAR will attempt to resolve classes before the loader for a containing EAR, which in turn attempts to resolve classes before the container's classloader. The goal here is isolation: if both the WAR and its EAR contain the same library, it's probably because the two need differing versions (that, or they have a sloppy build process). Even in the J2EE case, I believe that the container classloader delegates in the standard way.
In your code the call to super.loadClass() delegates the loading of the class to the parent classloader (just look at the implementation of java.lang.ClassLoader#loadClass). So it is not your instance of DynClassLoader0 that loads the class, but the currentThreadClassLoader (which you took from Thread.currentThread().getContextClassLoader()) that you passed as a constructor parameter to DynClassLoader0. And when the loaded class refers to other classes, they are then also loaded by that classloader and not your DynClassLoader0.