File path to a resource file inside .war folder

Question

I have to read records from a text file in my REST service method by accessing it by its relative path.

The service has been deployed to JBoss Application Server 7.1.1.

Where should I place the file inside the JBoss directory structure and what would be the best way of accessing resources in this type of a scenario.

I tried placing the file in the root of the war directory which returned java.io.FileNotFoundException

Accessing it through the absolute path worked fine.

Answer 1

Try adding the file to the root of the project and then do the following

// Use resourceAsStream of the classLoader to load the file
InputStream inputStream = getClass().getClassLoader().getResourceAsStream("myFile.properties");

// optionally wrap it with a bufferedReader if the file is large
BufferedReader br = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(inputStream));

Or if the path of the file is never going to change, you can use absolute paths as follows

FileInputStream in = new FileInputStream("/home/user/file/myFile.properties");