accessing a file from a servlet

[tony james]

Hi Andy,
I've placed my properties file in a directory under Web-inf. Now i'm getting the path to the file.

You can then use getResourceAsStream("/WEB-INF/myproperties.properties") to return you an InputStream that you can pass to the property.load() method.

Which class does the method 'getResourceAsStream' belong to? I checked java.lang.Class and java.lang.ClassLoader classes. The concept of ClassLoader confuses me.Could you please explain about it? Also, please give me the code for calling getResourceAsStream. I mean, isn't it like
someObject.getResourceAsStream("/WEB-INF/myproperties.properties")
Thanx in advance,
Tony
[ October 11, 2003: Message edited by: tony james ]

[Andy Bowes]

Hi Tony
Best way is to put the properties file into a directory in the deployed WAR file. I prefer to put it below the WEB-INF directory as then it cannot be viewed by typing the URL into a browser.
You can then use getResourceAsStream("/WEB-INF/myproperties.properties") to return you an InputStream that you can pass to the property.load() method.
HTH

[Roger Chung-Wee]

The file is relative to your web-xml file. If the entry looks like this, ie in the same directory as web-xml:
<init-param>
<param-name>filePath</param-name>
<param-value>./file.prop</param-value>
</init-param>
Then in your doGet or doPost, you can quickly test it like this:
out.println("file = " + getServletConfig().getInitParameter("filePath"));
This will print:
file = ./file.prop
[ October 10, 2003: Message edited by: Roger Chung-Wee ]

[Mike Curwen]

actually, I think '.' doesn't guarantee "from WEB-INF", so much as it guarantees 'the current directory'... so if I invoked my java command that started tomcat from /usr/local/tomcat , that's what '.' would give me.

Someone prove me wrong though.

[tony james]

Hi Andy,
I've placed my properties file in a directory under Web-inf. Now i'm getting the path to the file.

You can then use getResourceAsStream("/WEB-INF/myproperties.properties") to return you an InputStream that you can pass to the property.load() method.

Which class does the method 'getResourceAsStream' belong to? I checked java.lang.Class and java.lang.ClassLoader classes. The concept of ClassLoader confuses me.Could you please explain about it? Also, please give me the code for calling getResourceAsStream. I mean, isn't it like
someObject.getResourceAsStream("/WEB-INF/myproperties.properties")
What object should i use here?
Thanx in advance,
Tony

[Mike Curwen]

hi tony,

please Don't edit your original posting. It confuses the heck out of people because now the first posting (the original question) seems to have nothing to do with the following answers.

But anyways..

Quick lesson on API usage: When you're browsing the javadocs, click the "index" link that's at the very top of every page. Then click the first letter of the method name you want (in your case 'g'), and use your browser's Find function to find 'getResourceAsStream'

You will find it's on the javax.servlet.ServletContext interface.

Don't know how to get a ServletContext? try searching for 'getServletContext'.

As for classloading.. getResourceAsStream apparently doesn't use it. (or so the API says).
[ October 13, 2003: Message edited by: Mike Curwen ]

[tony james]

Hi Mike,
I accept editing the original post was a big mistake. Will make sure that it doesn't happen again. And thanks a lot for the API browsing tip.
Am still not able to read values from my properties file. I've placed it in TOMCAT_HOME\webapps\sample\WEB-INF\properties\test.properties
My server.xml entry is
<Context path="/sample" docBase="sample" debug="0"
reloadable="true" crossContext="true">
I am getting the ServletContext object using getServletContext().
But getServletContext().getResourceAsStream("/Web-inf/properties/test.properties")) returns null. What could be wrong?
Thanks
Tony

[tony james]

Hi,
Everythings working fine when i replaced getResourceAsStream("/Web-inf/properties/test.properties")) with WEB-INF
Thanks for the help anyway,
Tony