How to include app config file in WAR archive?

Question

I'm having trouble deploying a Java web app. It centers on our application config file (myapp.properties). In certain situations, having this file external to the WAR seems to work fine, but whenever I try to deploy it properly (Docker, proper JBoss deployment, etc.) the deployments inevitably fail due to being unable to find/read from myapp.properties.

I've seen a few references here and elsewhere to packaging these files inside the WAR archive, but I can't find any information on how to actually do that. So, my questions is:

What is the proper way to include an application config file in a WAR archive and/or deployment?

Answer 1

It depends in how you want to access the file.

If you want to load it via classloader resources, you need it to be in the class-path, so the best location is inside WEB-INF/classes .

That's by the way, where resources in src/main/resources will end up if you are using Maven

You can also put it anywhere inside your WAR, for example, WEB-INF/config and access it via ServletContext.getResourceAsStream("/WEB-INF/config/.... . Beware but, that it's not inside the WEB-INF directory, you will have to explicitly forbid the access to the file in the web.xml deployement descriptor, otherwise it would be accessible to client requests.