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Java: Article

Java Basics: Lesson 11, Java Packages and Imports (Live Video Education)

Lesson 11 in the Hugely Popular "Java Basics" Series by JDJ Editorial Board Member Yakov Fain
By Yakov Fain
Article Rating:
April 13, 2005 12:00 AM EDT
Reads:
 116,327

I've been using the Eclipse IDE for creating the Ping-Pong example, but you do not have to use any IDE, and can create these programs using any plain text editor and a standard javac compiler. In this case you'll need to follow the following steps to create these programs in the packages engine and screen.

  1. Create a directory PingPong
  2. Create two subdirectories inside called engine and package
  3. Type and save the file PingPongTable.java in the directory screens
  4. Type and save the file PingPongEngine in the directory engine
  5. Get into the PingPong directory and compile both classes:
    C:\PingPong>javac screens/PingPongTable.java
    C:\PingPong>javac engine/PingPongEngine.java
  6. Now you can run the program as follows:
    C:\PingPong>java screens.PingPongTable
Please note that you have to use a dot as a separator (not a slash!) between the package and class names. Make sure that the system variable classpath includes the dot (see the very first lesson of this series) to let JVM know that it has to look for classes starting from the current directory.  

Naming Conventions

If you are starting a new project, you need to come up with the directory structures and the names for your packages and these are some considerations to keep in mind:

  • Name packages using small letters
  • You should try to make your package/class name combination unique. There is a simple rule to achieve this: if you work for a company Best Bananas that has a Web site bestbananas.com, the URL of this Web site is guaranteed to be unique. Use this URL in a reverse order as a prefix to all your packages: com.bestnananas. If the name of your project is Shipping, add this word or abbreviation after this prefix: com.bestbananas.ship. You can further separate classes based on their functioinality, for example:
    com.bestbananas.ship.invoicing
    com.bestbananas.ship.delivery.

    Directory structure will look as follows:

         com
            bestbananas
                  ship
                    invoicing
                    delivery

  • Think of the future uses of your packages. For example, if the invoicing package may be reused in a different application, do not include there classes that are specific to your Shipping application.
  • If you have some useful classes that perform such commonly used functions as date formatting or logging, create separate directory for them like util and log.

Published April 13, 2005 – Reads 116,327
Copyright © 2005 SYS-CON Media, Inc. — All Rights Reserved.
Syndicated stories and blog feeds, all rights reserved by the author.

More Stories By Yakov Fain

Yakov Fain is a Managing Director of Farata Systems, consulting, training and product company. He has authored several Java books, dozens of technical articles. SYS-CON Books released his latest co-authored book , Rich Internet Applications with Adobe Flex and Java: Secrets of the Masters in Spring 2007. Sun Microsystems has nominated and awarded Yakov with the title Java Champion. He leads the Princeton Java Users Group. He is an Adobe Certified Flex Instructor. Currently Yakov works on the book for O'Reilly "Enterprise Application Development with Flex". He twits at twitter.com/yfain.

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Most Recent Comments
Howard N-H 04/13/05 02:53:31 PM EDT

I'm glad you mentioned the use of interfaces as repositories of constants. While it may not be recommended in the strict sense of why interfaces exist, I've used this technique for years on large projects as a good way of organizing and reusing constants.
static imports 04/12/05 06:23:33 AM EDT

So you can use wildcards in the import? Can you use static import for static classes?
Java Basics series 04/12/05 06:12:49 AM EDT

Will the other 10 lessons be on SYS-CON.TV?
Java Live 04/11/05 10:17:40 AM EDT

Is it Yakov Fain who is speaking at the moment? A live Java lesson - cool!
sundeep 04/11/05 06:43:13 AM EDT

I used this lesson in conjunction with the last one, lesson ten on eclipse IDE and it really helped me