Packages in Java



Packages In Java


Package in Java is a mechanism to encapsulate a group of classes, sub packages and interfaces. Packages are used for:
  • Preventing naming conflicts. For example there can be two classes with name Employee in two packages, college.staff.cse.Employee and college.staff.ee.Employee
  • Making searching/locating and usage of classes, interfaces, enumerations and annotations easier
  • Providing controlled access: protected and default have package level access control. A protected member is accessible by classes in the same package and its subclasses. A default member (without any access specifier) is accessible by classes in the same package only.
  • Packages can be considered as data encapsulation (or data-hiding).
All we need to do is put related classes into packages. After that we can simply write a import a class from existing packages and use it in our program. A packages is container of group of related classes where some of the classes are accessible are exposed and others are kept for internal purpose.
We can reuse existing classes from the packages as many time as we need it in our program.
How packages work?

Package names and directory structure are closely related. For example if a package name is college.staff.cse, then there are three directories, collegestaff and cse such that cse is present in staff and staff is present college. Also, the directory college is accessible through CLASSPATH variable, i.e., path of parent directory of college is present in CLASSPATH. The idea is to make sure that classes are easy to locate.
Package naming conventions : Packages are named in reverse order of domain names, i.e., org.geeksforgeeks.practice. For example, in a college, the recommended convention is college.tech.cse, college.tech.ee, college.art.history, etc.
Adding a class to a Package : We can add more classes to an created package by using package name at the top of the program and saving it in the package directory. We need a new java file to define a public class, otherwise we can add the new class to an existing .java file and recompile it.
Subpackages: Packages that are inside another package are the subpackages. These are not imported by default, they have to imported explicitly. Also, members of a subpackage have no access privileges, i.e., they are considered as different package for protected and default access specifiers.
Example :
import java.util.*;
util is a subpackage created inside java package.

Accessing classes inside a package
Consider following two statements :
// import the Vector class from util package.
import java.util.vector; 

// import all the classes from util package
import java.util.*; 
  • First Statement is used to import Vector class from util package which is contained inside java.
  • Second statement imports all the classes from util package.
// All the classes and interfaces of this package
// will be accessible but not subpackages.
import package.*;

// Only mentioned class of this package will be accessible.
import package.classname;

// Class name is generally used when two packages have same
// class name. For example in below code both packages have
// date class so using fully qualified name to avoid conflict
import java.util.Date;
import my.packag.Date;
Types of packages:

1) Built-in packages
2) User-defined packages
Built-in Packages
These packages consist of a large number of classes which are a part of Java API.Some of the commonly used built-in packages are:
1) java.lang: Contains language support classes(e.g classed which defines primitive data types, math operations). This package is automatically imported.
2)  java.io: Contains classed for supporting input / output operations.
3)  java.util: Contains utility classes which implement data structures like Linked List, Dictionary and support ; for Date / Time operations.
4)  java.applet: Contains classes for creating Applets.
5)  java.awt: Contain classes for implementing the components for graphical user interfaces (like button , ;menus etc).
6)  java.net: Contain classes for supporting networking operations.
User-defined packages
These are the packages that are defined by the user. First we create a directory myPackage (name should be same as the name of the package). Then create the MyClass inside the directory with the first statement being the package names.
// Name of the package must be same as the directory
// under which this file is saved
package myPackage;

public class MyClass
{
    public void getNames(String s)
    {        
        System.out.println(s);        
    }
}
Now we can use the MyClass class in our program.
/* import 'MyClass' class from 'names' myPackage */
import myPackage.MyClass;

public class PrintName 
{
   public static void main(String args[]) 
   {       
      // Initializing the String variable 
      // with a value 
      String name = "GeeksforGeeks";
      
      // Creating an instance of class MyClass in 
      // the package.
      MyClass obj = new MyClass();
      
      obj.getNames(name);
   }
}
Note : MyClass.java must be saved inside the myPackage directory since it is a part of the package.

Using Static Import
Static import is a feature introduced in Java programming language ( versions 5 and above ) that allows members ( fields and methods ) defined in a class as public static to be used in Java code without specifying the class in which the field is defined.
Some important points:
  1. Every class is part of some package.
  2. If no package is specified, the classes in the file goes into a special unnamed package (the same unnamed package for all files).
  3. All classes/interfaces in a file are part of the same package. Multiple files can specify the same package name.
  4. If package name is specified, the file must be in a subdirectory called name (i.e., the directory name must match the package name).
  5. We can access public classes in another (named) package using:
    package-name.class-name

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