I'm trying to wrap code that requires two *.db4o data files for easy use. I've added the data files to my eclipse .classpath by placing the files in ${project_dir}/res/ and adding the line:
<classpathentry kind="src" path="res"/>
to my .classpath.
I then defined a default constructor to my wrapper class that takes no arguments but goes and finds the paths to the *.db4o files (the paths are required by the compiled code I'm using to set things up). My approach for getting the paths is:
String datapath = ClassLoader.getSystemResource("resource_name").getPath();
This works great when I debug/run my code in eclipse. However when I export it as a jar, I can see that the *.db4o files are in the jar, as well as my compiled code, but the path returned to "datapath" is of the form:
datapath = ${pwd}/file:${absolute_path_to_jar}!/{resource_name}
Is there something about the resource being inside of the jar that prevents an absolute path from working? Also, why is the behavior different simply because the code and resources live in a jar file? One last note is that while my application is intended for wider use (from PIG, python, etc. code) I'm testing it from Matlab which is where I'm getting the odd value assigned to "datapath".
Thanks in advance for any responses.
getSystemResource() returns URL to resource. If your resource is zipped in a jar file then the URL will point into it (with the "!" notation). getPath() returns the "path" part of the URL, not always an actual file path. URL can be one of many things, not just a file.