Oracle Forms: Jar Icon Images

Oracle web forms uses image files for icons, by default forms will get each image individually, wasting time and bandwidth.

If you add the images to a jar file they are compressed and are loaded at startup, so each form wouldn't need to load the images each time. It also seems like a neater solution.

This code is a windows command script for creating the icon jar file.
The three parameters need to be set for each system.

• oh = Oracle home
• id = Icon directory
• jf = Jar filename

@ECHO OFF

TITLE Jar Icons

SET oh="C:\Oracle\DS10"
SET id="C:\MyApp\icons"
SET jf="C:\MyApp\icons.jar"

CD /D %id%

%oh%\jdk\bin\jar -cvf %jf% *.*

TITLE Jar Icons Complete

PAUSE

You then need to place the jar file on to your web server, so the web server can access them via a URL.
If you placed the jar file in the forms/java directory you wouldn't need a path, however mixing application and forms files isn't best practice.
The URL path to the jar file needs to be added to the archive parameter in forms/server/formsweb.cfg file, so for example:

archive=frmall.jar,myIconPath/icons.jar

or in the archive_jini parameter, if you use JInitiator

archive_jini=frmall_jinit.jar,myIconPath/icons.jar

You also need to set the imagebase parameter

imagebase=codebase

You can then reference the icons by name inside the form and they should then be displayed.

Quicker, Faster, Neater Forms Icons.. Done.