Google App Engine - java.security.AccessControlException?

Question

I am facing this issue whenever i try to access a file which is located in war/WEB_INF folder. I came to know that GAE use jetty and for jetty we need to set some permissions in .policy file but i am unable to locate that file as well. Here is my stack trace: -

java.security.AccessControlException: access denied (java.io.FilePermission /war/WEB_INF/mturktest.properties read)
at java.security.AccessControlContext.checkPermission(AccessControlContext.java:374)
at java.security.AccessController.checkPermission(AccessController.java:546)
at java.lang.SecurityManager.checkPermission(SecurityManager.java:532)
at com.google.appengine.tools.development.DevAppServerFactory$CustomSecurityManager.checkPermission(DevAppServerFactory.java:283)
at java.lang.SecurityManager.checkRead(SecurityManager.java:871)
at java.io.FileInputStream.<init>(FileInputStream.java:113)
at com.amazonaws.mturk.util.PropertiesClientConfig.<init>(PropertiesClientConfig.java:96)
at com.varundroid.testing.SiteCategory.<init>(SiteCategory.java:51)
at com.varundroid.testing.MTurkProjectServlet.doGet(MTurkProjectServlet.java:12)
at javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet.service(HttpServlet.java:617)
at javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet.service(HttpServlet.java:717)
at org.mortbay.jetty.servlet.ServletHolder.handle(ServletHolder.java:511)
at org.mortbay.jetty.servlet.ServletHandler$CachedChain.doFilter(ServletHandler.java:1166)
at com.google.appengine.tools.development.HeaderVerificationFilter.doFilter(HeaderVerificationFilter.java:35)
at org.mortbay.jetty.servlet.ServletHandler$CachedChain.doFilter(ServletHandler.java:1157)
at com.google.appengine.api.blobstore.dev.ServeBlobFilter.doFilter(ServeBlobFilter.java:60)
at org.mortbay.jetty.servlet.ServletHandler$CachedChain.doFilter(ServletHandler.java:1157)
at com.google.apphosting.utils.servlet.TransactionCleanupFilter.doFilter(TransactionCleanupFilter.java:43)
at org.mortbay.jetty.servlet.ServletHandler$CachedChain.doFilter(ServletHandler.java:1157)
at com.google.appengine.tools.development.StaticFileFilter.doFilter(StaticFileFilter.java:125)
at org.mortbay.jetty.servlet.ServletHandler$CachedChain.doFilter(ServletHandler.java:1157)
at com.google.appengine.tools.development.BackendServersFilter.doFilter(BackendServersFilter.java:97)
at org.mortbay.jetty.servlet.ServletHandler$CachedChain.doFilter(ServletHandler.java:1157)
at org.mortbay.jetty.servlet.ServletHandler.handle(ServletHandler.java:388)
at org.mortbay.jetty.security.SecurityHandler.handle(SecurityHandler.java:216)
at org.mortbay.jetty.servlet.SessionHandler.handle(SessionHandler.java:182)
at org.mortbay.jetty.handler.ContextHandler.handle(ContextHandler.java:765)
at org.mortbay.jetty.webapp.WebAppContext.handle(WebAppContext.java:418)
at com.google.appengine.tools.development.DevAppEngineWebAppContext.handle(DevAppEngineWebAppContext.java:94)
at org.mortbay.jetty.handler.HandlerWrapper.handle(HandlerWrapper.java:152)
at com.google.appengine.tools.development.JettyContainerService$ApiProxyHandler.handle(JettyContainerService.java:370)
at org.mortbay.jetty.handler.HandlerWrapper.handle(HandlerWrapper.java:152)
at org.mortbay.jetty.Server.handle(Server.java:326)
at org.mortbay.jetty.HttpConnection.handleRequest(HttpConnection.java:542)
at org.mortbay.jetty.HttpConnection$RequestHandler.headerComplete(HttpConnection.java:923)
at org.mortbay.jetty.HttpParser.parseNext(HttpParser.java:547)
at org.mortbay.jetty.HttpParser.parseAvailable(HttpParser.java:212)
at org.mortbay.jetty.HttpConnection.handle(HttpConnection.java:404)
at org.mortbay.io.nio.SelectChannelEndPoint.run(SelectChannelEndPoint.java:409)
at org.mortbay.thread.QueuedThreadPool$PoolThread.run(QueuedThreadPool.java:582)

Is there anything extra i need to perform for ex. adding some lines in appengine-web.xml to enable GAE to read this file?

Any help would be really appreciated.

Thanks.

Answer 1

The easiest way in GAE to get to the property file, provided that you have access to the code that opens the file, is to just move it to WEB-INF/classes and use getResourceAsStream to get an InputStream to it;

this.getClass().getClassLoader().getResourceAsStream("/mturktest.properties");

There are other options using getRealPath() described here that may give you a correct path for File I/O to work with, but I've never tested personally tested them with GAE so that I know they work.