JAVA: Creating a Simple Package

Packages are the libraries in Java. They can be either pre-defined or user-defined. Creating packages follows a very simple mechanism. It is possible to use to include the same package command in more than one Java source file to indicate that all such classes belong to the same package. The following example shows how to create a simple package that has only one class. This class has only one method test() whose objective is to determine if a given string is a palindrome or not. A palindrome as it is known is a set of characters that reads the same both ways. For instance, ABBA is a palindrome. This class is created under the mypackage package. This package later is imported in another class that is shown in a further example to make use of the method test().
package mypackage; public class Palindrome { public boolean test(String str) { char givenstring[]; char reverse[] = new char[str.length()]; boolean flag = true; int count = 0, ctr = 0; givenstring = str.toCharArray(); for(count = str.length() - 1; count >= 0; count++) { reverse[ctr] = givenstring[count]; ctr++; } for(count = 0; count < str.length(); count++) { if(reverse[count] != givenstring[count]) flag = false; } return flag; } }

Save the code as Palindrome.java in the current working directory. Compile the program using the following command: javac -d . Palindrome.java

It must be noted that there must be space before the . (dot) and another space after the dot. This creates a folder called mypackage in the current working directory and the class file is stored in mypackage directory. The CLASSPATH must be set to the current working directory so that the user-defined packages (class files) are available for use. Now that the package is created, it can be used in any Java programs. The import statement is used to include the newly created package in a program. This is illustrated in the next example:
import mypackage.*; class Palintest { public static void main(String args[]) { Palindrome objPalindrome = new Palindrome(); System.out.println(objPalindrome.test(args[0])); } }

In the above example, the user defined package is imported just as Javas built-in packages were imported. An instance of Palindrome class is created since the method test() is not static. If the method test() was declared static then the method could have been invoked using only the class name and there would have been no need to create an instance of the class. The method test() is used just like any other built-in method. When a java program is executed, the JVM searches for the classes used within the program on the file system. Java uses one of the two elements to find a class: The package name The directories listed in the CLASSPATH environment variable. It must be noted that you must ensure that the Palindrome.java file is not located in the same directory as the Palintest.java file. The Palindrome.java file can be moved to the package folder mypackage. The output of the above folder is:

The Palindrome.class file is located in the mypackage folder. Thus this can be concluded that the user-defined package mypackage can serve as a library for any other class.