DLL and LIB files – what and why

What is a DLL?

Dynamic Link Libraries (DLL)s are like EXEs but they are not directly executable. They are similar to .so files in Linux/Unix. That is to say, DLLs are MS's implementation of shared libraries.

DLLs are so much like an EXE that the file format itself is the same. Both EXE and DLLs are based on the Portable Executable (PE) file format. DLLs can also contain COM components and .NET libraries.

What does a DLL contain?

A DLL contains functions, classes, variables, UIs and resources (such as icons, images, files, ...) that an EXE, or other DLL uses.

Types of libraries:

On virtually all operating systems, there are 2 types of libraries. Static libraries and dynamic libraries. In windows the file extensions are as follows: Static libraries (.lib) and dynamic libraries (.dll). The main difference is that static libraries are linked to the executable at compile time; whereas dynamic linked libraries are not linked until run-time.

More on static and dynamic libraries:

You don't normally see static libraries though on your computer, because a static library is embedded directly inside of a module (EXE or DLL). A dynamic library is a stand-alone file.

A DLL can be changed at any time and is only loaded at runtime when an EXE explicitly loads the DLL. A static library cannot be changed once it is compiled within the EXE. A DLL can be updated individually without updating the EXE itself.

Loading a DLL:

A program loads a DLL at startup, via the Win32 API LoadLibrary, or when it is a dependency of another DLL. A program uses the GetProcAddress to load a function or LoadResource to load a resource.

Further reading:

Please check MSDN or Wikipedia for further reading. Also the sources of this answer.

Just package it anywhere in the jar. One thing you have to keep in mind though - before you can use the DLLs you need to actually extract these from the JAR and dump these on the hard disk somewhere otherwise you won't be able to load these

So basically - I did JNI project for the client where I will use such jar packaged within the war. However - before running any native methods I would get the DLL as a resource and write it to the disc into temp directory. Then I would run regular initialization code where my DLL is set to the same location I just wrote DLL to

Oh, and just in case: there's nothing special about packaging dll or any other file into jar. It's just like packaging stuff into zip

Here's some code I just digged out

public class Foo {
private static final String LIB_BIN = "/lib-bin/";
private final static Log logger = LogFactory.getLog(ACWrapper.class);
private final static String ACWRAPPER = "acwrapper";
private final static String AAMAPI = "aamapi51";
private final static String LIBEAU = "libeay32";

static {
    logger.info("Loading DLL");
    try {
        System.loadLibrary(ACWRAPPER);
        logger.info("DLL is loaded from memory");
    } catch (UnsatisfiedLinkError e) {
        loadFromJar();
    }
}

/**
 * When packaged into JAR extracts DLLs, places these into
 */
private static void loadFromJar() {
    // we need to put both DLLs to temp dir
    String path = "AC_" + new Date().getTime();
    loadLib(path, ACWRAPPER);
    loadLib(path, AAMAPI);
    loadLib(path, LIBEAU);
}

/**
 * Puts library to temp dir and loads to memory
 */
private static void loadLib(String path, String name) {
    name = name + ".dll";
    try {
        // have to use a stream
        InputStream in = ACWrapper.class.getResourceAsStream(LIB_BIN + name);
        // always write to different location
        File fileOut = new File(System.getProperty("java.io.tmpdir") + "/" + path + LIB_BIN + name);
        logger.info("Writing dll to: " + fileOut.getAbsolutePath());
        OutputStream out = FileUtils.openOutputStream(fileOut);
        IOUtils.copy(in, out);
        in.close();
        out.close();
        System.load(fileOut.toString());
    } catch (Exception e) {
        throw new ACCoreException("Failed to load required DLL", e);
    }
}
    // blah-blah - more stuff
}