Best location for properties file

Question

I'm working on a small java application that needs to load/save configuration properties. At first I tried using a properties file that lived inside the jar but I was concerned if someone were to upgrade to a later version (replace the existing jar) they would loose all of their settings.

My next idea was to write the configuration file to the disk and reference it but I'm not sure what location I should save to. I don't want to use the current directory because the user could move the jar between directories and forget about the configuration file.

Is there a common location for configuration property files (specifically on windows)? If so how would I access it (I assume it would be some sort of wild card character like %appdata%\my app\config.properties)?

Thanks!

Answer 1

You might want to look into using the Preferences API instead. It provides a lightweight and simple way of storing application and user preferences, without directly accessing the file system.

Answer 2

Try the java.util.prefs Preferences API... as long as you are using Java 1.4 or newer. I think that will do what you want. I wrote a little post about them a while back: http://coffeaelectronica.com/blog/2009/07/java-preferences-api/

Hope this helps.

Answer 3

The user.home system property provides the path to a users home directory if you want to store on the file system.

There is also the Preferences API that was added to Java to solve this exact problem.