Java™ How To Program (Early Objects), Tenth Edition

Loading an Image Resource

In line 28, the expression getClass().getResource("bug1.png") invokes method getClass (inherited indirectly from class Object) to retrieve a reference to the Class object that represents the LabelFrame class declaration. That reference is then used to invoke Class method getResource, which returns the location of the image as a URL. The ImageIcon constructor uses the URL to locate the image, then loads it into memory. As we discussed in Chapter 1, the JVM loads class declarations into memory, using a class loader. The class loader knows where each class it loads is located on disk. Method getResource uses the Class object’s class loader to determine the location of a resource, such as an image file. In this example, ...