Spring Batch CommandLineJobRunner can't find .xml configuration file

Question

I'm a total beginner in Spring Batch Framework, and I found easily understandable codes from http://www.javabeat.net/introduction-to-spring-batch/ to use as a learning tools. I have my project set up in Eclipse similiar to the codes from the page, it looks like this :

and the code executes the jobs in fileWritingJob.xml using CommandLineJobRunner like so :

package net.javabeat.articles.spring.batch.examples.filewriter;

import org.springframework.batch.core.launch.support.CommandLineJobRunner;

public class Main {

    public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {

        CommandLineJobRunner.main(new String[]{"fileWritingJob.xml", "LayeredMultiThreadJobTest"});
    }
}

and it runs as expected with no problem. But when I move the fileWritingJob.xml to another dir (still under the project dir) it doesn't run. I've tried changed the filename arguments at the CommandLineJobRunner method using relative and full path but it still doesn't run. For example, if create a directory under the project directory (same level as config) named jobs and put the xml there then pass the filepath to CommandLineJobRunner like this:

CommandLineJobRunner.main(new String[]{"/jobs/fileWritingJob.xml", "LayeredMultiThreadJobTest"});

or this

CommandLineJobRunner.main(new String[]{"../jobs/fileWritingJob.xml", "LayeredMultiThreadJobTest"});

it doesn't work.

But when I tried creating a subdir under the config directory and put the fileWritingJob.xml there, like this

CommandLineJobRunner.main(new String[]{"configsubdir/fileWritingJob.xml", "LayeredMultiThreadJobTest"});

it runs. It's as if the CommandLineJobRunner only checks the config directory.

I'm running out of ideas, can anyone help me?

UPDATE : After digging around a bit, thanks to Michael Minella's suggestion about ClassPathXmlApplicationContext I am able to put the xml wherever I want. I also consulted to this page Spring cannot find bean xml configuration file when it does exist and http://www.mkyong.com/spring-batch/spring-batch-hello-world-example/

So what I do now is declaring a new context by using ClassPathXmlApplicationContextand then run it using job launcher, here is how :

public static void main(String[] args) {

    String[] springConfig  = 
        {   
            "file:/path/to/xml/file" 
        };

    ApplicationContext context = new ClassPathXmlApplicationContext(springConfig);

    JobLauncher jobLauncher = (JobLauncher) context.getBean("jobLauncher");
    Job job = (Job) context.getBean("JobName");

    try {

        JobExecution execution = jobLauncher.run(job, new JobParameters());
        System.out.println("Exit Status : " + execution.getStatus());

    } catch (Exception e) {
        e.printStackTrace();
    }

    System.out.println("Done");

  }

Thank you very much for all your inputs!

Answer 1

A little detail around what is happening when you pass in the path to the xml based job definition to the CommandLineJobRunner . All we do is we pass that string to the constructor of ClassPathXmlApplicationContext . Because of that, it is expected that the xml file for the job definition be on the application's classpath. I can't tell from your project screen shot how you are building the project so I'm not sure if the config directory is on your classpath or not. However, if it is on the classpath and lives at the root of it, I'd expect you to be able to pass the path to the fileWritingJob.xml as "/config/fileWritingJob.xml" .

The source for this class can be helpful when debugging this type of issue. You can find the source code for the CommandLineJobRunner here: https://github.com/spring-projects/spring-batch/blob/master/spring-batch-core/src/main/java/org/springframework/batch/core/launch/support/CommandLineJobRunner.java

Answer 2

You can specify the job path relative to your config directory. For example, if fileWritingJob.xml is in config/jobs/ directory, then in you can execute the job as follows:

CommandLineJobRunner.main(new String[]{"jobs/fileWritingJob.xml", "LayeredMultiThreadJobTest"});

Likewise, if the job configuration file is outside of the config directory, you can write:

CommandLineJobRunner.main(new String[]{"../fileWritingJob.xml", "LayeredMultiThreadJobTest"});

You can specify an absolute path for locating the job.