When designing a Java library, extensibility is often a key requirement, especially in the later phases of a project. Library authors want to allow users to add custom behavior or provide their own implementations without modifying the core codebase. Java addresses this need with the Service Loader API, a built-in mechanism for discovering and loading implementations of a given interface at runtime.
Service Loader enables a clean separation between the Application Programming Interface (API) and its implementation, making it a solid choice for plugin-like architectures and Service Provider Interfaces (SPI). In this post, we’ll look at how Service Loader can be used in practice, along with its advantages and limitations when building extensible Java libraries.
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