Can you find all classes in a package using reflection?

Question

Is it possible to find all classes or interfaces in a given package? (Quickly looking at e.g. Package, it would seem like no.)

Answer 1

You need to look up every class loader entry in the class path:

    String pkg = "org/apache/commons/lang";
    ClassLoader cl = ClassLoader.getSystemClassLoader();
    URL[] urls = ((URLClassLoader) cl).getURLs();
    for (URL url : urls) {
        System.out.println(url.getFile());
        File jar = new File(url.getFile());
        // ....
    }   

If entry is directory, just look up in the right subdirectory:

if (jar.isDirectory()) {
    File subdir = new File(jar, pkg);
    if (!subdir.exists())
        continue;
    File[] files = subdir.listFiles();
    for (File file : files) {
        if (!file.isFile())
            continue;
        if (file.getName().endsWith(".class"))
            System.out.println("Found class: "
                    + file.getName().substring(0,
                            file.getName().length() - 6));
    }
}   

If the entry is the file, and it's jar, inspect the ZIP entries of it:

else {
    // try to open as ZIP
    try {
        ZipFile zip = new ZipFile(jar);
        for (Enumeration entries = zip
                .entries(); entries.hasMoreElements();) {
            ZipEntry entry = entries.nextElement();
            String name = entry.getName();
            if (!name.startsWith(pkg))
                continue;
            name = name.substring(pkg.length() + 1);
            if (name.indexOf('/') < 0 && name.endsWith(".class"))
                System.out.println("Found class: "
                        + name.substring(0, name.length() - 6));
        }
    } catch (ZipException e) {
        System.out.println("Not a ZIP: " + e.getMessage());
    } catch (IOException e) {
        System.err.println(e.getMessage());
    }
}

Now once you have all class names withing package, you can try loading them with reflection and analyze if they are classes or interfaces, etc.