The Jedi Tutorial

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by Andreas Raquet
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Importing classes and the class explorer

While the import function of Jedi is only suitable for .java files, most third party tools come as either class libraries (.class files) or .jar archives. Jedi cannot import these or display them in the browser, but there is some limited support. First you can access and use them just like the JDK or swing classes. To do this, you would add them to the class path using the preferences dialogs as done before and create/call them from your code.

In addition Jedi features a 'class explorer'. This is a tool similar to the main browser, that can read and display the structure of such external class libaries. To browse external .class or .jar files, one would add them to class path and open the 'Class Explorer' from the 'Windows' menu. We will now open the 'Class explorer' without adding any paths, which will at least allow to browse the JDK classes which are already present in the class path. Select the menu entry and a window will open showing a class name in the top, a member type selector below and two lists. The class field allows to type in a class name. The icon right of it opens a tree display of your complete class tree and allows to select a class rather than typing its name (note, that it may take Jedi a while to read the complete class tree). After choosing a class, the list on the lower left includes the selected class and its parents. Click on the 'Object' class in the left list and its member functions will appear in the right one. You cannot browse the source of these members, because it might not even exist. But you can see the header when you select a member function. You can also use the 'member types' button to switch the display to constructors, fields and some others. This should give you a good overview on the classes and allow you to start reverse engineering those undocumented classes now ;)
More information on the 'Class explorer' is available in the class explorer help.


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30.08.1999
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