Custom Class Loaders

Certain features of the Ice for Java run-time necessitate dynamic class loading. Applications with special requirements can supply a custom class loader for Ice to use in the following situations:

If an application does not supply a class loader (or if the application-supplied class loader fails to locate a class), the Ice run time attempts to load the class using class loaders in the following order:

  • current thread's class loader
  • default class loader (that is, by calling Class.forName)
  • system class loader

Note that an application must install object factories for any abstract Slice classes it might receive, regardless of whether the application also installs a custom class loader.

To install a custom class loader, set the classLoader member of Ice.InitializationData prior to creating a communicator:

Java
Ice.InitializationData initData = new Ice.InitializationData();
initData.classLoader = new MyClassLoader();
Ice.Communicator communicator = Ice.Util.initialize(args, initData);

See Also