How to inject a network file resource with Spring?

Question

How can I tell Spring that the resource is supposed to be a network resource, and let it autowire accordingly?

@Value("\\MY-MACHINE\thefile.txt")
private Resource file;

Result:

Caused by: java.io.FileNotFoundException: class path resource [MY-MACHINE\thefile.txt] cannot be resolved to URL because it does not exist

Answer 1

I am assuming your application is deployed on Windows. I don't have anywhere windows workstation to test it, but as far as I remember this is how it goes:

• create symbolic link to your network location:

   mklink /DC:\\my-machine \\\\MY-MACHINE\\ 

• refer to this symlink with absolute path:

@Value("file:///C:/my-machine/thefile.txt")
private Resource file;

Answer 2

As nobody seems to be aware of, I found out that it's just necessairy to use double slashes like:

@Value("\\\\MY-MACHINE\\thefile.txt")
private Resource file;

In some cases you may required a file: statement before, like: file:\\\\\\\\MY-MACHINE\\\\thefile.txt"

Answer 3

This is the easiest way using classpath

import org.springframework.core.io.Resource;

@Value("classpath:<path to file>")
private Resource file;

Answer 4

Accessing a file on a Windows share will not work directly. See connecting to shared folder in windows with java for more info on how to do that.