Question

I’m developping my first Java application which actually needs a 3rd party package and now I’m lost as to how to actually use it. The packages I need are from VLCJ so that I can embed a media player in my GUI.

Usually, I can just import packages and classes, but is this possible with 3rd party packages? They have a .jar file to download at their website, are the packages stored in that? And if so, how do I go about using them in my own application?

Answer 1

You just need the third party JAR to be on your project’s classpath. What IDE are you using? In Eclipse you would do:

Go to Package Explorer window on the
left. Select the Java project you are
working on and right click. Click
Properties. Then click Java Build
Path. Click Add External Jars.

Or you could modify your system wide CLASSPATH to include the JAR. Or you can do it on the command line e.g.

java -classpath C:\java\thirdpartjars\thirdparty.jar MyProgram

(you can use the argument with javac too).

There are many ways to crack this nut.