Loading velocity template inside a jar file

Question

I have a project where I want to load a velocity template to complete it with parameters. The whole application is packaged as a jar file. What I initially thought of doing was this:

VelocityEngine ve = new VelocityEngine();

   URL url = this.getClass().getResource("/templates/");

   File file = new File(url.getFile());

   ve = new VelocityEngine();
   ve.setProperty(RuntimeConstants.RESOURCE_LOADER, "file");
   ve.setProperty(RuntimeConstants.FILE_RESOURCE_LOADER_PATH, file.getAbsolutePath());
   ve.setProperty(RuntimeConstants.FILE_RESOURCE_LOADER_CACHE, "true");

   ve.init();

   VelocityContext context = new VelocityContext();

   if (properties != null) {
    stringfyNulls(properties);
    for (Map.Entry<String, Object> property : properties.entrySet()) {
     context.put(property.getKey(), property.getValue());
    }
   }

   final String templatePath = templateName + ".vm";
   Template template = ve.getTemplate(templatePath, "UTF-8");
   String outFileName = File.createTempFile("report", ".html").getAbsolutePath();
   BufferedWriter writer = new BufferedWriter(new FileWriter(new File(outFileName)));

   template.merge(context, writer);

   writer.flush();
   writer.close();

And this works fine when I run it in eclipse. However, once I package the program and try to run it using the command line I get an error because the file could not be found.

I imagine the problem is in this line:

ve.setProperty(RuntimeConstants.FILE_RESOURCE_LOADER_PATH, file.getAbsolutePath());

Because in a jar the absolute file does not exist, since it's inside a zip, but I couldn't yet find a better way to do it.

Anyone has any ideas?

Answer 1

If you want to use resources from classpath, you should use resource loader for classpath:

ve.setProperty(RuntimeConstants.RESOURCE_LOADER, "classpath"); 
ve.setProperty("classpath.resource.loader.class", ClasspathResourceLoader.class.getName());

Answer 2

Unless JAR is exploded, you can't read the resource in JAR as file. Use an input stream.

See following code snippets,

    InputStream input = classLoader.getResourceAsStream(fileName);
    if (input == null) {
        throw new ConfigurationException("Template file " +
                fileName + " doesn't exist");           
    }

    InputStreamReader reader = new InputStreamReader(input);            
        Writer writer = null;

        try {
            writer = new OutputStreamWriter(output);        

            // Merge template
            if (!engine.evaluate(context, writer, fileName, reader)) 
                ......

Answer 3

Final code, developed using the ideas presented in both answers above:

VelocityEngine ve = new VelocityEngine();
            ve.setProperty(RuntimeConstants.RESOURCE_LOADER, "classpath");
            ve.setProperty("classpath.resource.loader.class", ClasspathResourceLoader.class.getName());

            ve.init();

            final String templatePath = "templates/" + templateName + ".vm";
            InputStream input = this.getClass().getClassLoader().getResourceAsStream(templatePath);
            if (input == null) {
                throw new IOException("Template file doesn't exist");
            }

            InputStreamReader reader = new InputStreamReader(input);

            VelocityContext context = new VelocityContext();

            if (properties != null) {
                stringfyNulls(properties);
                for (Map.Entry<String, Object> property : properties.entrySet()) {
                    context.put(property.getKey(), property.getValue());
                }
            }

            Template template = ve.getTemplate(templatePath, "UTF-8");
            String outFileName = File.createTempFile("report", ".html").getAbsolutePath();
            BufferedWriter writer = new BufferedWriter(new FileWriter(new File(outFileName)));

            if (!ve.evaluate(context, writer, templatePath, reader)) {
                throw new Exception("Failed to convert the template into html.");
            }

            template.merge(context, writer);

            writer.flush();
            writer.close();