I want to use a Java application, which is not written by me and also not maintained anymore, meaning I can't just go to the author and ask for a new feature. What options do I have to add proxy capabalities. Is it possible to add some shell arguments? Is it manageable work to add the binary code for the proxy directly into the .class file? Could I write my own class, import the stuff from the .class files and overwrite the network functionality?
This might work for you:
java -Dhttp.proxyHost=IP_address -Dhttp.proxyPort=8080 -jar App.jar
It is possible to replace a class with your own implementation by creating a class with the same name/package and placing it earlier in the classpath so it takes precedence. However you cannot break binary compatibility if this class is used by other parts of the code.
There are also instrumentation APIs available to modify classes as they are loaded. See the Instrumentation API.
If you are creating your own source file that references the compiled .class, then in your file try doing this:
java.util.Properties systemProperties = System.getProperties();
systemProperties.setProperty("http.proxyHost", PROXY_HOST);
systemProperties.setProperty("http.proxyPort", PROXY_PORT);
I think that should work.
Related
When I used to write libraries in C/C++ I got into the habit of having a method to return the compile date/time. This was always a compiled into the library so would differentiate builds of the library. I got this by returning a #define in the code:
C++:
#ifdef _BuildDateTime_
char* SomeClass::getBuildDateTime() {
return _BuildDateTime_;
}
#else
char* SomeClass::getBuildDateTime() {
return "Undefined";
}
#endif
Then on the compile I had a '-D_BuildDateTime_=Date' in the build script.
Is there any way to achieve this or similar in Java without needing to remember to edit any files manually or distributing any seperate files.
One suggestion I got from a co-worker was to get the ant file to create a file on the classpath and to package that into the JAR and have it read by the method.
Something like (assuming the file created was called 'DateTime.dat'):
// I know Exceptions and proper open/closing
// of the file are not done. This is just
// to explain the point!
String getBuildDateTime() {
return new BufferedReader(getClass()
.getResourceAsStream("DateTime.dat")).readLine();
}
To my mind that's a hack and could be circumvented/broken by someone having a similarly named file outside the JAR, but on the classpath.
Anyway, my question is whether there is any way to inject a constant into a class at compile time
EDIT
The reason I consider using an externally generated file in the JAR a hack is because this is) a library and will be embedded in client apps. These client apps may define their own classloaders meaning I can't rely on the standard JVM class loading rules.
My personal preference would be to go with using the date from the JAR file as suggested by serg10.
I would favour the standards based approach. Put your version information (along with other useful publisher stuff such as build number, subversion revision number, author, company details, etc) in the jar's Manifest File.
This is a well documented and understood Java specification. Strong tool support exists for creating manifest files (a core Ant task for example, or the maven jar plugin). These can help with setting some of the attributes automatically - I have maven configured to put the jar's maven version number, Subversion revision and timestamp into the manifest for me at build time.
You can read the contents of the manifest at runtime with standard java api calls - something like:
import java.util.jar.*;
...
JarFile myJar = new JarFile("nameOfJar.jar"); // various constructors available
Manifest manifest = myJar.getManifest();
Map<String,Attributes> manifestContents = manifest.getAttributes();
To me, that feels like a more Java standard approach, so will probably prove more easy for subsequent code maintainers to follow.
I remember seeing something similar in an open source project:
class Version... {
public static String tstamp() {
return "#BUILDTIME#";
}
}
in a template file. With Ant's filtering copy you can give this macro a value:
<copy src="templatefile" dst="Version.java" filtering="true">
<filter token="BUILDTIME" value="${build.tstamp}" />
</copy>
use this to create a Version.java source file in your build process, before the compilation step.
AFAIK there is not a way to do this with javac. This can easily be done with Ant -- I would create a first class object called BuildTimestamp.java and generate that file at compile time via an Ant target.
Here's an Ant type that will be helpful.
Unless you want to run your Java source through a C/C++ Preprocessor (which is a BIG NO-NO), use the jar method. There are other ways to get the correct resources out of a jar to make sure someone didn't put a duplicate resource on the classpath. You could also consider using the Jar manifest for this. My project does exactly what you're trying to do (with build dates, revisions, author, etc) using the manifest.
You'll want to use this:
Enumeration<URL> resources = Thread.currentThread().getContextClassLoader().getResources("META-INF/MANIFEST.MF");
This will get you ALL of the manifests on the classpath. You can figure out which jar they can from by parsing the URL.
Personally I'd go for a separate properties file in your jar that you'd load at runtime... The classloader has a defined order for searching for files - I can't remember how it works exactly off hand, but I don't think another file with the same name somewhere on the classpath would be likely to cause issues.
But another way you could do it would be to use Ant to copy your .java files into a different directory before compiling them, filtering in String constants as appropriate. You could use something like:
public String getBuildDateTime() {
return "#BUILD_DATE_TIME#";
}
and write a filter in your Ant file to replace that with a build property.
Perhaps a more Java-style way of indicating your library's version would be to add a version number to the JAR's manifest, as described in the manifest documentation.
One suggestion I got from a co-worker
was to get the ant file to create a
file on the classpath and to package
that into the JAR and have it read by
the method. ... To my mind that's a
hack and could be circumvented/broken
by someone having a similarly named
file outside the JAR, but on the
classpath.
I'm not sure that getting Ant to generate a file is a terribly egregious hack, if it's a hack at all. Why not generate a properties file and use java.util.Properties to handle it?
MATLAB is configured to search its static java class path before searching the user-modifiable dynamic path. Unfortunately, the static path contains quite a number of very old public libraries, so if you are trying to use a new version you may end up loading the wrong implementation and get errors.
For instance, the static path contains an old copy of the google-collections.jar, which has long been supplanted by Google's guava library and which has some of the same class names (e.g. com.google.common.base.Objects). As a result, if you invoke a Guava method that uses a newer method of one of such a class, you will end up getting surprising NoSuchMethodErrors because the google-collections jar is found first.
As of R2012b, MATLAB lets you specify additional jars to add to the static path by putting a javaclasspath.txt file in your preferences folder, but that adds jars to the end of the path, and doesn't let you override jars that are built into MATLAB.
So what is the best way around this?
I got an official response from Mathworks:
As of MATLAB R2013a (also in R2012b), classes can be added to the front of the static Java class path by including the following line in javaclasspath.txt:
<before>
Any directory that is after this line in javaclasspath.txt will be added to the front of the static Java class path. This is an undocumented use of javaclasspath.txt as of R2013a.
But overall in MATLAB, the ability to add classes to the front of the static Java classpath is not available through javaclasspath.txt in MATLAB 8.0 (R2012b).
MATLAB searches for classpath.txt in the following order:
In the startup directory. As of MATLAB 8.0 (R2012b) a warning will be shown if the file is found there and it will be ignored.
In the first directory on the MATLABPATH environment variable. (This environment variable is used in the bin/matlab shell script on Linux and in general is not used by the end-user).
In the toolbox/local directory.
Although the MATLABPATH environment variable of point 2 is normally not used by end-users we can use it in a workaround to allow reading a custom classpath.txt outside of the toolbox/local directory.
On Windows:
You will need to create the MATLABPATH environment variable. The first directory on it should be your directory with the custom classpath.txt AND you will also need to add the toolbox\local directory as second option. So from a cmd prompt you could do:
set MATLABPATH=c:\Users\user\Documents\myMATLABClasspath;c:\Program Files\MATLAB\R2012b
\toolbox\local
matlab.exe
One hack that appears to work is to add the jar to the top of the classpath.txt file that can be found in your MATLAB installations toolbox/local folder. Unfortunately, this is automatically generated and may get rewritten at some unspecified time, such as when you install new toolboxes, so this approach would require you to have some way to notice when this happens and reapply the hack.
If you're distributing a jar that's intended to be used with matlab, it may be better to use proguard as described at http://code.google.com/p/guava-libraries/wiki/UsingProGuardWithGuava.
If you specify that all of your classes and their (public) fields and methods are to be preserved and include guava as a program jar (not a library), then it will rename all of guava's methods and update your compiled bytecode to reference the new names.
It seems a bit hackish, but depending on the audience, it may be significantly easier than teaching your users about static vs. dynamic classpath, and it won't break any matlab code that depends on the old behavior.
Instead of obfuscating the package as suggested by #user2443532, I have found it easier to "shade" the conflicting package instead of obfuscating it - unless you actually need obfuscation. One easy way to do this is to build your package using Maven and use the maven-shade-plugin. Internal calls are modified automatically, so you don't need to modify any of the Java code.
Direct calls from Matlab will need to be modified - for example, calls to com.opensource.Class become shaded.com.opensource.Class.
For more info on shading, see What is the maven-shade-plugin used for, and why would you want to relocate Java packages?
Suppose I have have a java project myProject and am using an external library jar (someJar.jar), which has a class com.somepackage.Class1.class.
Now I find an updated version of Class1.java which fixes a bug in the original jar.
I include the new Class1.java in my source code under package com.somepackage
When I build the project (e.g., using Netbeans), there is a dist\myProject.jar which contains the classcom.somepackage.Class1.class and a dist\lib\someJar.jar which also contains a class with the same name.
When I run the file (e.g, using java -jar dist\myProject.jar), the new version of Class1.class is used (as I want).
How does Java decide which class file to run in case of such duplicates? Is there any way I can specify precedence ?
Is there any 'right' way to avoid such clashes?
In Proguard, when I try to compress my code, I get a duplicate class error. How do I eliminate this?
Java decides which one to use based on the order of the classpath. List yours first and you'll be fine.
The "right" way would be to fix the orignal source, but sometimes that's not always an option.
I haven't used ProGuard, but I have re-jarred libaries before that had duplicate classes. The solution in my case was to tell Ant to ignore duplicate classes. I would assume ProGuard would have that support too.
Can you not create an updated jar file which contains the bug fix? It's going to make things a lot simpler if you don't have two versions of the same fully-qualified class around.
1) Updated Jar is a better solution.
2) Use a different class name. Is there a reason, why you want to use the same class name and same packing? I don't think there is a reason.
3) create a wrapper/ proxy class, that encapsulate all the calls to the jar and you can decide to call this new class that fixes the bug ( provided it has a different name and packaging)
We have a jar that we lost the source code to. I decompiled the jar and created new source from it. I want to then verify that the source code and the old jar have the same behavior. I am writing unit tests to do the verification the problem is that they both have same namespace / class name so I do not know how to disambiguate the old jar and the new source code. What can I do or is it impossible?
You need to only have one version on the class path at once to guarantee that you are running that version of the code. Develop your unit test separate from the code so you can drop in either version.
Give the new source a temporary namespace for testing purposes. Then instead of import, you can refer your new classes as:
com.yourfirm.test.packagename.TheClassName
the old ones can be simply imported and refered to as TheClassName. This way you can tell by looking at your test cases which is which.
Or simply run the tests with -cp oldpackage.jar and then -cp newpackage.jar.
It's possible, but you have to mess around with class loading. Instead of putting either of the jars on the classpath, you'll need to load them at runtime. Check out JCL for a library to allow you to do this. (Disclaimer: I have never used JCL.)
Basically, each test would have to load the class from the old JAR, grab the results of the method you're testing, then unload that JAR, load up the new one, run the same method against the new version, and compare the results.
I'd change which classes are being tested at runtime with the classpath. This approach would be less error-prone in terms of ensuring that you're running the same test code against both binaries. Otherwise you introduce more complexity around whether the tests are correct.
It sounds like you are trying to execute the tests against both jars at the same time. I don't know of a way to disambiguate the old/new jars if they are both in the classpath.
If your unit tests output results to stdout/stderr, you could run the tests against the original jar and save the results. Then run the tests against the new jar and save the results in a separate file. Then diff the files.
Another approach would be to refactor the new source code so that it has a unique namespace. You could then test against both jars at the same time, but it could be a lot of work to make existing programs use the new jar.
If you run your tests via ant (Junit-task), you can control the ant classpath seperately for both runs (once via jar, once via fileset of classes).
When I used to write libraries in C/C++ I got into the habit of having a method to return the compile date/time. This was always a compiled into the library so would differentiate builds of the library. I got this by returning a #define in the code:
C++:
#ifdef _BuildDateTime_
char* SomeClass::getBuildDateTime() {
return _BuildDateTime_;
}
#else
char* SomeClass::getBuildDateTime() {
return "Undefined";
}
#endif
Then on the compile I had a '-D_BuildDateTime_=Date' in the build script.
Is there any way to achieve this or similar in Java without needing to remember to edit any files manually or distributing any seperate files.
One suggestion I got from a co-worker was to get the ant file to create a file on the classpath and to package that into the JAR and have it read by the method.
Something like (assuming the file created was called 'DateTime.dat'):
// I know Exceptions and proper open/closing
// of the file are not done. This is just
// to explain the point!
String getBuildDateTime() {
return new BufferedReader(getClass()
.getResourceAsStream("DateTime.dat")).readLine();
}
To my mind that's a hack and could be circumvented/broken by someone having a similarly named file outside the JAR, but on the classpath.
Anyway, my question is whether there is any way to inject a constant into a class at compile time
EDIT
The reason I consider using an externally generated file in the JAR a hack is because this is) a library and will be embedded in client apps. These client apps may define their own classloaders meaning I can't rely on the standard JVM class loading rules.
My personal preference would be to go with using the date from the JAR file as suggested by serg10.
I would favour the standards based approach. Put your version information (along with other useful publisher stuff such as build number, subversion revision number, author, company details, etc) in the jar's Manifest File.
This is a well documented and understood Java specification. Strong tool support exists for creating manifest files (a core Ant task for example, or the maven jar plugin). These can help with setting some of the attributes automatically - I have maven configured to put the jar's maven version number, Subversion revision and timestamp into the manifest for me at build time.
You can read the contents of the manifest at runtime with standard java api calls - something like:
import java.util.jar.*;
...
JarFile myJar = new JarFile("nameOfJar.jar"); // various constructors available
Manifest manifest = myJar.getManifest();
Map<String,Attributes> manifestContents = manifest.getAttributes();
To me, that feels like a more Java standard approach, so will probably prove more easy for subsequent code maintainers to follow.
I remember seeing something similar in an open source project:
class Version... {
public static String tstamp() {
return "#BUILDTIME#";
}
}
in a template file. With Ant's filtering copy you can give this macro a value:
<copy src="templatefile" dst="Version.java" filtering="true">
<filter token="BUILDTIME" value="${build.tstamp}" />
</copy>
use this to create a Version.java source file in your build process, before the compilation step.
AFAIK there is not a way to do this with javac. This can easily be done with Ant -- I would create a first class object called BuildTimestamp.java and generate that file at compile time via an Ant target.
Here's an Ant type that will be helpful.
Unless you want to run your Java source through a C/C++ Preprocessor (which is a BIG NO-NO), use the jar method. There are other ways to get the correct resources out of a jar to make sure someone didn't put a duplicate resource on the classpath. You could also consider using the Jar manifest for this. My project does exactly what you're trying to do (with build dates, revisions, author, etc) using the manifest.
You'll want to use this:
Enumeration<URL> resources = Thread.currentThread().getContextClassLoader().getResources("META-INF/MANIFEST.MF");
This will get you ALL of the manifests on the classpath. You can figure out which jar they can from by parsing the URL.
Personally I'd go for a separate properties file in your jar that you'd load at runtime... The classloader has a defined order for searching for files - I can't remember how it works exactly off hand, but I don't think another file with the same name somewhere on the classpath would be likely to cause issues.
But another way you could do it would be to use Ant to copy your .java files into a different directory before compiling them, filtering in String constants as appropriate. You could use something like:
public String getBuildDateTime() {
return "#BUILD_DATE_TIME#";
}
and write a filter in your Ant file to replace that with a build property.
Perhaps a more Java-style way of indicating your library's version would be to add a version number to the JAR's manifest, as described in the manifest documentation.
One suggestion I got from a co-worker
was to get the ant file to create a
file on the classpath and to package
that into the JAR and have it read by
the method. ... To my mind that's a
hack and could be circumvented/broken
by someone having a similarly named
file outside the JAR, but on the
classpath.
I'm not sure that getting Ant to generate a file is a terribly egregious hack, if it's a hack at all. Why not generate a properties file and use java.util.Properties to handle it?