Howto access properties file from jee web application?

Question

Hi,

I have created a dynamic web project within Eclipse. I created a properties file inside the src directory:

<project-root>/src/props.properties

I'm starting Tomcat via Eclipse in debug mode. Now I want to read the properties file from one of my POJOs, but I get a FileNotFoundException. The current path seems to be the Eclipse path.

I had a look into the web for solution, but none of them worked for me. Maybe I did something wrong. The code is like this:

File file = new File("props.properties");
FileReader reader = new FileReader(file);
properties.load(reader);

How should I acces the properties file? Where should it be located?

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

Check this question. You should do "src/props.properties"

Answer 2

Is your project set to build automatically? If so (or you're building manually), check whetherprops.properties appears in your project's output folder (in Eclipse this is usually "bin" but may be WebRoot or something else, depending on how your project is set up).

When a project builds, it should copy over config files as well as your compiled classes, JSPs etc. However, I believe that file readers, by default, use the JVM's home directory for their source. In Eclipse's case, this means that your props.properties file would have to be in the project root, i.e. not the "src" folder.

Answer 3

If its a web application then the properties will get deployed to WEB-INF/classes and can be loaded using the class loader

InputStream in = getClass().getResourceAsStream("/props.properties");
properties.load(in);
in.close();

Actully that should work regardless of whether it is a webapp or not.

I'm assuming src is defined as a source folder