How to set up a relative path

[Tom Shypulski]

I'm putting together a website with JSP pages and servlets. I have built a admin control page for some site management. I would like the ability to add a directory like "http:\\localhost\directory\path\files" by typing the path "\directory\path\files" into a text field on a jsp page, store path in MySQL db for use in creating links. I want the path to append to the end of http:\\localhost\. Is this possible using a relitive path as opposed to absolute path. It seems that when I create the new directory File f1 = new File() in my servlet it is relative to my WEB-INF folder, I want it to be reative to my ROOT directory.

[Travis Hein]

File webappFileSystemPath = new File(request.getSession().getServletContext().getRealPath("/"));

will return a file object to the location of the top of your web application on the file system, for example, "c:\program files\apache tomcat 6\webapps\myapp"

From the file object, you can get work to parse out or extract the prefix or pieces of it, and do a relative path from it.?

[Tom Shypulski]

Thanks Travis, That did give me what I'm looking for but I have another problem.
Can I create folders in this manner in the Tomcat ROOT Directory. My folders fail to create in the ROOT dir when obtianing the path from the solution provided. I am able to create folders one level up in the webapps directory. Are there settings I need to configure without leaveing web server unsecure.

Is it best to keep my .jsp's under the ROOT directory?

Here are snipets of code I'm using to create the directories.

From .jsp I get the ROOT path then append the folder\ folders I want to create by passing a form value.

<%File webappFileSystemPath = new File(request.getSession().getServletContext().getRealPath("/")); %>

<form><input type="Hidden" name="webappFileSystemPath" value="<%out.println(webappFileSystemPath);%></input>
</form>

From servlet I call doCreateDir(relativeDir);

appPath = request.getParameter("apppath");
rootDir = request.getParameter("webappFileSystemPath");
relativeDir =  rootDir + appPath;
cd.doCreateDir(relativeDir);

Here is code to create path. Returned is Failure to create directory.

public class CreateDirectory {

    public void doCreateDir(String dir) {
    		String newDir = dir;
    		
    		File success = new File(newDir);
    		if (success.canWrite()) {
    			System.out.println(success.canWrite());
    			System.out.println("Successfully created directory: " + newDir);
    		} else {
    			System.out.println(success.canWrite());
    			System.out.println("Failed to create directory: " + newDir);
    		}

}

Thanks again.

>

[Bear Bibeault]

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[Travis Hein]

if one or more folders within the path do not exist we need to first create them

for example,
"/web/app/root/" + "/folder1/file.jsp"

we know /web/app/root/ exists, but if /folder1/ doesn't exist inside it, we won't be able to write to file.jsp , and the same in the more general case of many folders in the relative path component.

so, try adding a call to mkdirs() of the File object,

public void doCreateDir(String dir) {  
  String newDir = dir;  
             
  File success = new File(newDir);  

  if (!success.exists()) {
    if (!success.mkdirs()) {
      // failed to create folders
    }
  }
 // the rest of the stuff.