The problem is your runtime classpath. There's no magic with this error. It quite simply means that org.json.JSONException is not on your runtime classpath. Find the jar that has this class in it and put it on your runtime classpath.
Note that the jars / classes needed for runtime are not necessarily the same as those needed for compiling. You quite often need more on your runtime classpath than your compile classpath. If JSONException isn't used explicitly in the code you are compiling, then it won't have to be on your compile classpath. However, if one of the dependencies to your code needs JSONException and it's not on your runtime classpath, you will get a NoClassDefFoundError.
One other issue that can possibly occur is that you have 2 different versions of the json jar on your classpath. Usually the first version of the class on the classpath gets loaded and the other ignored. If the first jar didn't have the version / signature of JSONException you needed in it but the second did, the correct class you would still get ignored, since it was further down on the classpath.
Answer from TheEllis on Stack OverflowVideos
The problem is your runtime classpath. There's no magic with this error. It quite simply means that org.json.JSONException is not on your runtime classpath. Find the jar that has this class in it and put it on your runtime classpath.
Note that the jars / classes needed for runtime are not necessarily the same as those needed for compiling. You quite often need more on your runtime classpath than your compile classpath. If JSONException isn't used explicitly in the code you are compiling, then it won't have to be on your compile classpath. However, if one of the dependencies to your code needs JSONException and it's not on your runtime classpath, you will get a NoClassDefFoundError.
One other issue that can possibly occur is that you have 2 different versions of the json jar on your classpath. Usually the first version of the class on the classpath gets loaded and the other ignored. If the first jar didn't have the version / signature of JSONException you needed in it but the second did, the correct class you would still get ignored, since it was further down on the classpath.
The issue would appear to be that you are not adding the dependent jars to your resultant jar.
I have created a similar test jar, with the following structure (checking using jar tf)...
META-INF/
META-INF/MANIFEST.MF
BeanIt.class
TestBean.class
lib/
lib/opencsv-3.7.jar
lib/commons-lang3-3.4.jar
My manifest...
Main-Class: BeanIt
Class-Path: lib/opencsv-3.7.jar lib/commons-lang3-3.4.jar
In order to create this jar, you need to perform a command something similar to this...
jar cfm App.jar MANIFEST.MF BeanIt.class TestBean.class lib
You can see that I've added my lib folder to the jar and referred to its contents on the classpath in the manifest.
So, you can update your existing lib, like this...
jar uf App.jar path
Where path is the root path of your path/to/lib directory. And it will simply add that to your jar.
You can check your jar first using jar tf, to see what it contains.
If you are still having difficulties getting it to work, then you can look at a "FAT JAR" solution whereby you expand all the internal jars classes and flatten them all out to a single JAR containing all the necessary classes. They use decision mechanisms to deal with class conflicts in different JARs. Tools such as sbt-assembly or OneJar may be what you need here, if you are unable to get your JAR working the way you expect.
Add json jar to your classpath
or use java -classpath json.jar ClassName
Or add this to your maven pom.xml depedencies:
<dependency>
<groupId>org.json</groupId>
<artifactId>json</artifactId>
<version>20090211</version>
</dependency>
As of today (15th July 2020), you need to use latest maven repository as per below:
<dependency>
<groupId>org.json</groupId>
<artifactId>json</artifactId>
<version>20200518</version>
</dependency>
For any new version in the future, you can check it here:
- https://mvnrepository.com/artifact/org.json/json
Then simply replace 20200518 with latest new version value.
Have you considered using Maven? for instance, if you wanted a JAR to pars JSON you could just include...
http://mvnrepository.com/artifact/org.codehaus.jackson/jackson-core-asl/1.9.6
<dependency>
<groupId>org.codehaus.jackson</groupId>
<artifactId>jackson-core-asl</artifactId>
<version>1.9.6</version>
</dependency>
in a pom.xml, this will give you the jar for JSON.
Or better yet, use the org.json one...
http://mvnrepository.com/artifact/org.json/json
<dependency>
<groupId>org.json</groupId>
<artifactId>json</artifactId>
<version>20090211</version>
</dependency>
I downloaded a jar from here: http://code.google.com/p/org-json-java/downloads/detail?name=org.json-20120521.jar&can=2&q=