Read file from /src/main/resources/

Question

I am trying to do a web application and have a problem: I don't know how to open a text file with Java that is saved in the resource folder:

 String relativeWebPath ="/src/main/resources/words.txt";  //Import der des Textdoumentes
 String absoluteDiskPath = getServletContext().getRealPath(relativeWebPath);
 File f = new File(absoluteDiskPath);

(The file words.txt)

As you can see on the image I am trying to access words.txt but it isn't working. Any ideas?

Dossal

/src/main/resources/, though present in your project directory structure, is probably not a part of the Web path. – Envision

Thanks for your answer. /src/main/resources/ is not working. How should I change the directory structure? – Service

Answer 1

Try this.

InputStream is = getClass().getClassLoader()
                         .getResourceAsStream("/words.txt");
BufferedReader br = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(is));

Giannini

Thread.currentThread().getContextClassLoader() may be a better option, as stated here: #3161191 – Haslam

Thanks for your answer, but this does not work for me. Still can't find the file. – Service

Remove the "/", just: ClassLoader classLoader = Thread.currentThread().getContextClassLoader(); InputStream is = classLoader.getResourceAsStream("words.txt"); – Haslam

Answer 2

For best practice, and avoid these problems, put text file (words.txt) to WEB_INF folder (this is secure folder for resources). Then:

ServletContext context = getContext();
InputStream resourceContent = context.getResourceAsStream("/WEB-INF/words.txt");

Reference: https://mcmap.net/q/88626/-file-path-to-resource-in-our-war-web-inf-folder

Scirrhus

Thank you for the answer. Sadly your answer doesn't work for me. – Service

@dovy, In this case, you have to maintain two different codes (java standalone, web) just because of the directory issue. I think this is not a good idea. – Snapp

what if the file is in the src/main/resources folder in a separate .jar? There is no way to move it to the WEB_INF folder of the webapp module... – Stockish

Answer 3

Use this code to find the path to the file you want to open.

import java.net.URL;

[...]

URL url = this.getClass().getResource("/words.txt");
String absoluteDiskPath = url.getPath();

Skywriting

Answer 4

If you want to access in some other class, like you have a utility package and in that, you have a ReadFileUtil.java class which opens and reads the file, you can do it in the following way:

public class ReadFileUtil {

        URL url = ReadFileUtil.class.getResource("/"+yourFileName);
        File file = new File(url.getPath());

    }

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