Problem with resources location difference in eclipse and JARs

Question

I wrote a program that is based completely on a single text file: I read the file, store the information, then search the information, etc. So, for the program to work, the file just has to be present and detectable by the program. I use eclipse, so I put the file is in the default resources map (src/main/resources). At the start of my program I create the file:

private static File textFile = new File("src/main/resources/TEXT.TXT")

However, when I try to package my program using Maven, I get a JAR in which all class and resources files are present in the same folder; my program stops working since it cannot find the file anymore.

Any help on how to deal with this problem? I`d prefer a situation in which my program works in eclipse and as a JAR, but as a JAR only would be alright as well.

Answer 1

You can use ClassLoader.getResourceAsStream to load it from the classpath (or getResource to get the URL of the file).

Thread.currentThread().getContextClassLoader().getResource("TEXT.TXT")

This works as long as src/main/resources is on the classpath in eclipse. (The maven eclipse plugin includes it by default.) The file has to be in the jar file to work outside of eclipse.

Answer 2

Nice suggestions, this works perfect in eclipse itself: the correct location of the file is returned and I can use the file to do whatever I like. When opening the program as a jar, there is still a problem. The getResource method returns a location that looks like the right one:

/something/something/something/something/workspace/program/target/program-0.0.1.jar!/TEXT.TXT.

However, when I convert this url to a string, use that string to create a file object and use this file object in my program, I get the following error:

java.io.FileNotFoundException: file:/something/something/something/something/workspace/program/target/program-0.0.1.jar!/TEXT.TXT (No such file or directory)

So, the getResource method does find the file, but the program somehow can't use it..