Getting resources outside of src folder in a JAR file

Question

I've been searching around for hours trying to fix this problem and found multiple posts about similar problems, but nothing I find seems to do the exact thing I'm trying.

I have a res folder at the same level of my src folder which I use for things like images and text files. I can easily spit out the text file in Eclipse by simply doing:

    FileInputStream fis = new FileInputStream("res/misc/foo.txt");
    BufferedReader br = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(fis));

    String line;
    while((line = br.readLine()) != null) {
        System.out.println(line);
    }

However, the problem starts when I package this up in a runnable JAR file. I found multiple threads pointing this out:

Class.class.getResourceAsStream("/misc/foo.txt");

However, this only works if the resources are in the same source folder as the class. And indeed, when i move the res folder into src it can find the resource, but that's not how I want to organize my project.

Is there some way to do this that I missed, or should I change my folder structure?

Answer 1

You should be able to get the path with something like:

String path = <YourClassName>.class.getProtectionDomain().getCodeSource().getLocation().getPath();

Then a quick test to check if the directory is there:

File folder = new File(path);
File[] dirList = folder.listFiles();

for (File list : dirList) {
    if (list.isDirectory()) {
        System.out.println("Directory " + list.getName());
    }
}

Answer 2

You're going to have to change your structure, such as make res a source folder as well (you can have more than one source folder). It's not really about being a source folder, it's about getting your resources to be copied into the same tree that makes up the contents of the resulting jar.

Answer 3

Just likenitind already said:

Create the folder res as a source folder (just like src ). Put your files there and then you can access them the same way you access files in your src ie

FileInputStream fis = new FileInputStream("/misc/foo.txt");

In Eclipse you can simply create a new file as "Source Folder". You could also just copy the scr folder and rename it to lets say res .

Answer 4

Use maven resource plugin, The resources plugin copies files from input resource directories to an output directory.

<plugin>
    <artifactId>maven-resources-plugin</artifactId>
    <version>3.0.2</version>
    <configuration>
        ...
    </configuration>
</plugin>

Assume we want to copy resource files from the directory input-resources to the directory output-resources and we want to exclude all files ending with the extension .png.

just like excludes you can include files using

These requirements are satisfied with this configuration:

<configuration>
    <outputDirectory>output-resources</outputDirectory>
    <resources>
        <resource>
            <directory>input-resources</directory>
            <excludes>
                <exclude>*.png</exclude>
            </excludes>
            <filtering>true</filtering>
        </resource>
    </resources>
</configuration>