How to load a config xml file with FileInputStream, but getting a FileNotFoundException

Question

My build path in Eclipse looks like this:

ProjectName
   -- WEB-INF
      -- classes
         -- myClass.class
      -- configs
         -- myConfig.xml

My absolute path to the config currently looks like this:

C:\Development\Java\ProjectName\WEB-INF\configs\myConfig.xml

I'm using JAXB for the binding, and it is expecting a FileInputStream. The FileInputStream needs to be a stream for the XML config file. However, I can't figure out how to get the FileInputStream for my config, and I keep getting a FileNotFoundException.

I want this config to be loaded in such a way that someone doesn't have to hardcode the path to the config because I plan on releasing the project open source. I see a lot of examples where someone just hardcodes the full absolute path, but I need it to be something more flexible "like" this:

new FileInputStream("/WEB-INF/configs/myConfig.xml");

Thanks!

Answer 1

I'd recommend putting that myConfig.xml in the WEB-INF/classes directory instead and loading it via the class loader, since it's in the classpath. Calling getResourceAsStream() on the servlet context will return an InputStream that you can use. It's relative to the context root, so you can pick up that WAR and put it anywhere - your code will still work.

Answer 2

You can get the input stream of relative paths under WEB-INF fairly easily with ServletContext.getResourceAsStream() method (javadoc here) and its variants.

For example, in your selvlet code you can do this:

getServletContext().getResourceAsStream("/WEB-INF/configs/myConfig.xml") // your file
getServletContext().getResource("/WEB-INF") // URL to WEB-INF dir