loading a class from out of classpath by using Java Reflection

Question

I want to load class from that is not in class path. is there any way that I load class by file path without being in classpath ? for example

ClassLoader.load("c:\MyClass.class");

Answer 1

Example taken from here:

// Create a File object on the root of the directory containing the class file  
File file = new File("c:\\myclasses\\");

try {
    // Convert File to a URL
    URL url = file.toURL();          // file:/c:/myclasses/
    URL[] urls = new URL[]{url};

    // Create a new class loader with the directory
    ClassLoader cl = new URLClassLoader(urls);

    // Load in the class; MyClass.class should be located in
    // the directory file:/c:/myclasses/com/mycompany
    Class cls = cl.loadClass("com.mycompany.MyClass");
} catch (MalformedURLException e) {
} catch (ClassNotFoundException e) {
}

Answer 2

Load your class content into a byte array and use ClassLoader.html#defineClass(java.lang.String, byte[], int, int) manually.