How to open a file from jar?

Question

I have a project where I open some XML files to read and edit information. This works fine when running in the IDE (Netbeans) but fails when I am building the project and running the .jar file. Is there a reason why this might not work? The path of the project in Netbeans is

NetBeansProjects\project\src\data

but when I am running the jar file, this path is

NetBeansProjects\project\build\classes

However, when I create the files in this folder, they still cannot be opened.

Answer 1

The XML files need to be in the classpath when the jar file is executed.

You can give the classpath using -cp option when executing the jar file. Similar question was answered here as well - Run a JAR file from the command line and specify classpath