Is it possible/how to embed and access HTML Files in a JAR?

Question

i am somewhat blocked right now: i wrote a quite complex Java Desktop App (no Applet/Web App!) which has it\'s own \"user Manual\". This manual consists of some HTML and JPG

Answer 1

File manual = new File(getClass().getResource("/manual/help.html").toURI());

That is where it goes wrong. Java cannot create a File object from an embedded-resource

Keep it as an URL and use that for setPage(..).

---

As to the more general problem.

HTML from a Jar file that links resources (e.g. CSS or images) by relative references will work just fine.

E.G.

This example loads HTML (that has a relative reference to an image) from a Jar.

import javax.swing.*;
import java.net.URL;

class ShowHtml {

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        final String address =
            "jar:http://pscode.org/jh/hs/object.jar!/popup_contents.html";
        SwingUtilities.invokeLater(new Runnable() {
            public void run() {
                try {
                    URL url = new URL(address);
                    JEditorPane jep = new JEditorPane(url);
                    JFrame f = new JFrame("Show HTML in Jar");
                    f.setDefaultCloseOperation(JFrame.EXIT_ON_CLOSE);
                    f.add(new JScrollPane(jep));
                    f.pack();
                    f.setSize(400,300);
                    f.setLocationByPlatform(true);
                    f.setVisible(true);
                } catch(Exception e) {
                    e.printStackTrace();
                }
            }
        });
    }
}

Screenshot

HTML

The HTML that is being loaded.

 Popup Window

Popup windows appear near the location from which they are
activated.  They are not contained in frames and thus
cannot be resized or moved by the user.  Popups are
dismissed by clicking anywhere in the help viewer.

Popup windows can be activated by clicking on a text object, 
graphic object, or JComponent button.  All three examples are
included in this demo.

More...

E.G. 2

For dynamically created HTML, the JRE will probably use the class file's location as the presumed location of the HTML. But to remove all doubt, we can specify the base element in the head.

import javax.swing.*;

class HtmlUsingBase {

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        final String htmlContent =
            "" +
            "" +
            "" +
            "" +
            "" +
            "
Image path from BASE
" +
            "" +
            "" +
            "";
        SwingUtilities.invokeLater(new Runnable() {
            public void run() {
                JLabel label = new JLabel(htmlContent);
                JOptionPane.showMessageDialog(null, label);
            }
        });
    }
}

Screenshot