FAQ How do I find out the install location of a plug-in?

You should generally avoid making assumptions about the location of a plug-in at runtime. To find resources, such as images, that are stored in your plug-in’s install directory, you can use URLs provided by the Platform class. These URLs use a special Eclipse Platform protocol, but if you are using them only to read files, it does not matter.

The following snippet opens an input stream on a file called sample.gif located in a subdirectory, called icons, of a plug-in’s install directory:

   Bundle bundle = Platform.getBundle(yourPluginId);
   Path path = new Path("icons/sample.gif");
   URL fileURL = FileLocator.find(bundle, path, null);
   InputStream in = fileURL.openStream();

If you need to know the file system location of a plug-in, you need to use FileLocator.resolve(URL). This method converts a platform URL to a standard URL protocol, such as HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP), or file. Note that the Eclipse Platform does not specify that plug-ins must exist in the local file system, so you cannot rely on this method’s returning a file system URL under all circumstances in the future.

See Also:

• FAQ Where do plug-ins store their state?

---

This FAQ was originally published in Official Eclipse 3.0 FAQs. Copyright 2004, Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved. This text is made available here under the terms of the Eclipse Public License v1.0.