Recognizing properties file changes without restarting Tomcat

[Leah Jay]

Hello,

After updating a properties file, is there a way for the server to recognize the changes without restarting?


Thanks,
Leah

[Nathaniel Stoddard]

I think it depends "where" the change is taking place. If you have it in a WAR that isn't deployed into "webapps" then I think Tomcat only cares about changes to lib. If it's just a directory somewhere, it's a live so next time you open the file it's the new one. If you've deployed into webapps, obviously you'll need to do that again for any changes to take place in Tomcat.

Does that help any? If not, maybe you can give more information about what's going on and what you mean by "recognizing file changes."

[Leah Jay]

Hello,

The properties file is in a directory inside of webapps. For example:

tomcat\webapps\dir1\dir2\test.properties

When this properties file is updated and stored through Java, the server will not give the updated values if calling the getProperty method.


-Leah

[William Brogden]

Didn't you already get an answer to this in another forum (or are two people having the same problem?)
Anyway - create a File object pointing to the properties file and use the lastModified() call to get the timestamp on the properties file when you first read it. You can keep that File object and timestamp as instance variables.
Subsequently, before using the properties, check the timestamp again and re-read if necessary.
Bill