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Class file parser

I have an assignment where i need to write a Java program that parses a .class file and retrieves things like :
1.name of the .java file
2.implemented interfaces
3.variables
4.constructors
5.methods
I don't have any ideeas where to begin from?
For example,what kind of Data I/O structure should I use?

You can you ClassParser which is available in Apache commons library. you can read the Javadoc here. You can download apache commons from here
You can also use Java reflection API which provides method such as getDeclaredFileds, getDeclaredMethods etc.

There are already several libraries for classfile parsing out there. Objectweb ASM is the most popular.
If you have to do it from scratch, that I'd recommend starting by the JVM specification, which explains the binary layout of classfiles in detail. After that, parsing is just a simple matter of programming. I've written a classfile parser before, it's not that hard.

You don't need any external library, just use java.lang.Class. Write the name of your class:
[NameOfMyClass].class.getDeclaredFields();
[NameOfMyClass].class.getDeclaredConstructors();
[NameOfMyClass].class.getDeclaredMethods();
It's the same for interfaces and many other attributes.

You can use Java Reflection. Here is a good tutorial -->
Java Reflection Tutorial

OpenJDK actually comes with an API that lets you parse and manipulate class files programmatically that most programmers don't know about. It is located at the package com.sun.org.apache.bcel.internal.

How eclipse deduces the methods of a class in a jar file

like:
import com.xxx.utility.*;
class MyClass{
public static void main(String[] args){
MyUtiliy ut = new MyUtiliy();
MyUtility.doAdd(5, 6);
.......
}
}
When put the "." after MyUtiliy, eclipse will tell you all the methods you can use, how does eclipse achieve this?
Does eclipse use the reflection on the fly? (like the answer of this thread? )

The architecture of the eclipse software is describe here, in the section 6.1.2. Java Development Tools (JDT) it briefly describes the incremental build system used. That system would have all the relavent information to populate the autocomplete mechanism.
For the exact mechanism, you would have to look at the eclipse source code.

Yes Eclipse (and any other Java IDEs) uses reflection.
If fact Eclipse uses a ClassLoader for each project's libraries, so it load the classes in jar files, and after that everything is easy, it can get information using reflection.
By the way java IDEs not only use reflection, but also read class debug info, to extract parameter names, and so on.

There is an explanation in this article. Basically the Eclipse Java compiler builds an Abstract Syntax Tree (AST) of your code which lets it find all the information it needs for autocompletion very quickly.
So it is not using reflection for this, rather it is compiling the code in to an internal form for quick access.
When no source code is available (you just have a .class file) it is still possible to construct the part of the AST containing the class methods and types which are needed for completion. This appears to be done by reading the .class files directly rather than using a class loader (org.eclipse.jdt.internal.compiler.classfmt.ClassFileReader)

Support for package "com.ibm.misc" and its classes

I wanted to decode a Base64 string in my XPage for which I was using sun.misc.BASE64Decoder class. But according to Java developer should not write programs that call 'sun' packages. I was searching for an alternative when I stumbled on com.ibm.misc.BASE64Decoder. It worked for me with same results as sun.misc.BASE64Decoder. So I would like to know if it is okay for developers to use this package and its classes? Or is it to be avoided like 'sun' package?
Also I know that I can use Apache Commons for Base64 but I would like to minimize my dependency on external JARs.

With com.ibm.misc.BASE64Decoder you'll have exactly the same problem as with sun.misc.BASE64Decoder: it's an internal class which only exists in a specific JVM implementation, in this case IBM's JVM.
Note that there is no com.ibm.misc.BASE64Decoder in Oracle's JVM, so if you use this class, your program is not going to work on Oracle's JVM; it will fail with a NoClassDefFoundError.
You could use the method that mre refers to in his comment, which is in the class javax.xml.bind.DatatypeConverter - part of the JAXB API, which is part of the standard Java API (since Java SE 6).

Accessing information about Java libraries programmatically

I would like to write toy IDE for Java, so I ask a question about one particular thing that as I hope can help me get started.
I have editor implemented on top of swing and i have some text in there. There is for example:
import java.util.List;
Now I need a way to send "java.util.List" string to a method that returns me all the information I may need including JavaDoc document.
So is there any tool that can set up classpath with libraries, that would parse every string I send and try to find if there is any Class/Interface with documentation to return?

So is there any tool that can set up classpath with libraries, that would parse every string I send and try to find if there is any Class/Interface with documentation to return?
AFAIK, no. There is no such free-standing tool or library. You will need to implement it yourself. (Don't expect that writing a Java IDE is simple ... even a "toy" one.)

Libraries will have class files, which will not have javadocs.. So it is not clear what you want to do.
There are many byte code engineering tools to analyse and extract information from class files. For example asm or bcel. Javassist allows to process both source and byte code, so may be close to what you need.

You could use html parser to get the javadoc and other info from the web using the full path to the class (including package names to construct the correct URL per class). This will of course depend on the version of java you are using.
You can also use the javadoc tool from within java to generate the desired documentation from java source files (which can be downloaded from the web). The source code of the tool could also help you out. See http://java.sun.com/j2se/javadoc/faq/#developingwithjavadoc
Lastly, if you need information based on runtime types in your program, you might want to check reflection capabilities.

First you need to know How to print imported java libraries?. Then download java API documentation here. Once you find out imported libraries, open an inputStream in order to read appropriate HTML file.
Beware! This technic will only work when importing from jdk.

Automatically build resource class based of XML in Java

In Android applications, resources are specified in xml documents, which automatically are built into the R class, readily accessible within the source code as strongly typed.
Is there any way I could use a similar approach for a regular Java desktop application?
What I'd like to accomplish, is both the removal of strings from the code (as a separation of "layers", more or less) and to make it easy to add support for localization, by simply telling the program to choose the xml file corresponding to the desired language.
I've googled around a bit, but the things I'm looking for seem to be drowning in results about parsing or outputting xml, rather than tools utilizing xml to generate code.

Eclipse's message bundle implementation (used by plugins for example) integrates with the Externalize Strings feature and generates both a static class and a resource properties file for your strings:
http://www.eclipse.org/eclipse/platform-core/documents/3.1/message_bundles.html
For this integration to work Eclipse needs to see org.eclipse.osgi.util.NLS on the class path. From memory, the dependencies of the libraries it was available in were a little tricky for the project I used this approach in, so I just got the source and have it as a stand-alone class in my core module (see the comments for more on that).
It provides the type safety you're looking for and the IDE features save a lot of time. I've found no downsides to the approach so far.
Edit: this is actually what ghostbust555 mentioned in the comments, but not clear in that article that this isn't limited to Eclipse plugins and you refer to your resources via static members of a messages class.
I haven't seen any mention of others using this approach with their own applications, but to me it makes complete sense given the IDE integration and type safety.

I'm not sure if this is what you mean but check out internationalization- http://netbeans.org/kb/docs/java/gui-automatic-i18n.html

Are you looking for something that parses XML files and generates Java instances of similar "struct-like" objects, like JAXP, and JAXB?

I came across ResGen which, given resource bundle XML files generates Java files that can be used to access the resources in a type-safe way.
http://eigenbase.sourceforge.net/resgen/