Subj : Re: importPackage Search
To   : "Edwin S. Ramirez" <ramirez@idconcepts.org>
From : Igor Bukanov <igor@icesoft.no>
Date : Wed Jan 22 2003 10:15 pm

Edwin S. Ramirez wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> I have recently started playing with Rhino.  I am using the Rhino
> engine within an applet.  I have noticed that when importing a package
> "importPackage(java.awt)", it makes requests to the server for the
> classes.  The server reponds with a "file not found", and it seems to
> eventually find the class somewhere else.  Is there a way to
> change/disable this?


As there is no easy way in Java to now if x.y.z is a package or class 
name, Rhino always tries to find a class with the given name, and if it 
is not present, it will assume a package name. Thus when you pass 
java.awt to importPackage, java.awt is evaluated and as a part of this 
evaluation Class.forName("java.awt") will be called which will first 
search your jar and then Java will append java/awt.class to your applet 
codebase and query server for it. If you use importPackage several 
times, then a class will be searched in each package which would also 
generate requests to the server if the class is not found in the first 
package.

As a workaround I suggest not no use importPackage, but introduce 
shortcuts like:

var S = javas.swing;
var A = java.awt;

var button = new S.JButton();
var font = new A.Font();

Another possibility is to point your applet codebase to the jar itself:

<param name="codebase" 
value="jar:http://your-server-address/full-path-to-jar/x.jar/">

where you may want to use some JavaScript with document.write not to 
hard code the server address and the absolute jar path.


Regards, Igor

.