How can I load an external class file? I found an example as follows, but it doesn't work.
//string containing full path of external class file
String class1 = "...\\Example.class"
Class loadClass = Class.forName(class1);
loadClass.main(args);
Any ideas how to load? Normal case for loading a class inside the same project is easy:
Example.main(args)
How to do this for external classes?
Class.forName() takes a fully qualified class name and not a path as argument. Example "com.example.MyApp" http://docs.oracle.com/javase/1.5.0/docs/api/java/lang/Class.html#forName(java.lang.String) Look into setting the classpath instead.
Edit: Or if you need to load a class dynamically during runtime based on a parameter, look into using a custom classloader. http://docs.oracle.com/javase/1.5.0/docs/api/java/lang/ClassLoader.html
Your .class file has to be in the classpath in the correct location.
This means that if that .class file has a package declaration of package p1.p2 he has to be placed in the class path, at the path /p1/p2/Whatever.class. If your .class file is inside a (correctly built) .jar file, then he's already in the good folder structure inside the .jar, you just have to place the .jar at the root of your classpath.
Also, remove the .class from your call, the argument should be something like:
Class<?> clazz = Class.forName("java.lang.String");
