Adding jars in shared hosting environment

["Mike Millson" <mgm@atsga.com>]

I am able to run servlets on the server space that I rent from a hosting
company. They give me a servlet directory that I can put my servlets in.
They don't have any JAXP parsers or anything installed and available, and
they're not about to install anything special for 1 person.

How can I use components like crimson.jar if I cannot add them to the
CLASSPATH or put them in jre/lib/ext?

I tried putting crimson.jar in the servlets directory, that didn't work.

I tried unpacking crimson.jar and putting the class files in the appropriate
subdirectory in the servlets directory. e.g. I put SAXParserFactory.class in
servlets/javax/xml/parsers/. That didn't work.

To test to see if the classes are being picked up I just tried to create a
SAXParserFactory object. e.g.

I get the "The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration..."
error.

Has anyone done this? It seems like I should be able to uses these classes
even if I cannot change the CLASSPATH or put them in jre/lib/ext.