How to open a resource file in a WAR using a string pathname?

Question

I am building a WAR/EAR and one of my components reads in many custom configuration files using File IO:

Reader reader = new BufferedReader(new FileReader(path));

The path above is a String that is passed as a property to this class through Spring's applicationContext.xml file.

What String path do I specify if I want to put all these configuration files inside a WAR? Can this even be done? Or is the component incorrect and should be using getResourceAsStream() instead?

I browsed around and found a lot of info on getResource() and URI. However, I could not find whether it is possible to create the right file path to a resource inside applicationContext.xml

Answer 1

In spring environment it's better to use spring resources API Simple example:

@Inject
private ResourceLoader resourceLoader;

public void someMethod() {
    Resource resource = resourceLoader.getResource("file:my-file.xml");
    InputStream is = null;
    try {
        is = resource.getInputStream();
        // do work
        ....
    } finally {
        IOUtils.closeQuetly(is);
    }
}

If you want to access external files (non-classpath resources, which should be located in META-INF/resources within the archive) with non fixed paths you should put such paths in main properties file and load it on app deploy.

edit: change @Resource to @Inject in example