Using Command Line Arguments in NetBeans IDE

This post covers the following points:

• How to open the project properties dialog box for NetBeans IDE projects?
• How to use command line arguments while running programs through NetBeans IDE?

NetBeans IDE provides a way to invoke our Java program having a main method with command line arguments.  Let us walk through this process.  We will create a new Java Application project and will add some code to the Main method which will print the provided command line arguments on the console.

Test Code we have written in the Main method:

/*
* To change this template, choose Tools | Templates
* and open the template in the editor.
*/
package com.tusharvjoshi.argsdemo;

/**
*
* @author Tushar Joshi
*/
public class Main {

/**
* @param args the command line arguments
*/
public static void main(String[] args) {
if (args.length == 0) {

System.out.println("No Command Line arguments");

} else {

System.out.println("You provided " + args.length
+ " arguments");

for (int i = 0; i < args.length; i++) {
System.out.println("args[" + i + "]: "
+ args[i]);
}
}
}
}

Opening the project properties dialog boxWe can either right click on the project name in the Projects panel and choose the properties option, or we can choose the Project Properties option from the File menu.

Saving the command line arguments

In the project Properties dialog box we will have to choose the Run node from the left Categories tree.  As soon as we select the Run node we can see the options for the run configuration.

In the Arguments text box we have to type our command line arguments.  We can see we have typed "one two three" as the options in the dialog box for testing.

Now when we Run the project the project will run as if these command line arguments are being typed in front of the java command.  We can see the output window to check how the arguments are printed by our test code.

with regards

Tushar Joshi, Nagpur

UPDATE: 21 Mar 2014:
There is a plugin available for NetBeans IDE 8.0 which allows interactive command line arguments facility to the IDE, more details are in this post