Question

I’m trying to use this tool

https://swingexplorer.dev.java.net/

to find some information out about an applet’s swing structure. Unfortunately, I didn’t develop the applet. I’ve pulled the jars for the applet from the cache, but there are several hundred .class files in the jars, and I don’t know which one has the main method.

Is there a way to pinpoint the applet’s entry point? The browser must be able to figure it out to run the applet, so that information has to be somewhere in the jar (or maybe the .idx files that were in the same directory with the jars).

Ideas appreciated.

Answer 1

The lifecycle of an Applet (or JApplet) is more complicated than start and run until the program is finished so there is no single main method. It will be managed by the browser (lifecycle tutorial.)

The applet class is specified by the deployment mechanism (e.g. applet/object/embed tags.) See the deployment tutorial for determining how this type is specified.