Java Services
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External
Internal
Overview
A service is a well-known set of interfaces and (usually abstract) classes. A service provider is a specific implementation of a service. Service providers can be installed as extensions, which are JAR files placed into any of the usual extension directories. Providers can also be made available by adding them to the application's class path or by some other platform-specific means.
The service provider is identified by placing a provider-configuration file in the resource directory META-INF/services. The file name is the fully qualified binary name of the service type. The file contains a list of fully-qualified binary names of concrete provider classes, one per line.