# Java bindings

The GDAL project has SWIG generated Java bindings for GDAL and OGR.

Generally speaking the classes and methods mostly match those of the GDAL and OGR C++ classes. You can find the ​Javadoc of the API of the Java bindings for GDAL 1.7.0 and later releases.

Due to the fact the Java garbage collector works in a separate thread from the main thread, it is necessary to configure GDAL with multi-threading support, even if you do not use GDAL API from several Java threads.

The minimum version of Java required to build the Java bindings is Java 7

## Maven Users

The Java bindings are available from the ​`Maven Central <http://search.maven.org/>`__ repository. All that is needed is to declare a dependency.

    <dependency>
       <groupId>org.gdal</groupId>
       <artifactId>gdal</artifactId>
       <version>1.11.2</version>
    </dependency>

## Useful Links

- ​`Javadoc <http://gdal.org/java>`__ of the API of the Java bindings for GDAL 1.7.0 and later releases.

- gdalinfo.java Sample Java program similar to gdalinfo utility (use API from Java bindings of GDAL 1.7.0dev)

- All Java sample programs

- Tamas Szekeres' Windows daily builds : Tamas Szekeres maintains a complete set of Win32 and Win64 binary packages (compiled with VC2003/VC2005/VC2008/VC2010) that include the GDAL Java bindings. These packages are based on the current development and stable branches built from the GDAL SVN daily. The -devel packages are based on the development version (1.9.0dev at time of writing), and the -stable packages are based on the latest stable branch (1.8 at time of writing)

- Image I/O-Ext : The main core module of the project is gdalframework, a framework leveraging on GDAL via SWIG's generated JAVA bindings to provide support for a reach set of data formats. (Note: this framework doesn't necessarily ship the latest released GDAL version)

- GdalOgrInJavaBuildInstructions : Complete instructions for building GDAL's Java bindings from scratch on Windows.

- GdalOgrInJavaBuildInstructionsUnix : Build instructions for java on Unix/Linux?/MinGW.