Develop Reference

Using relative path in a maven project

I have a maven project with these standard directory structures:
src/main/java
src/main/java/pdf/Pdf.java
src/test/resources
src/test/resources/files/x.pdf
In my Pdf.java,
File file = new File("../../../test/resources/files/x.pdf");
Why does it report "No such file or dirctory"? The relative path should work. Right?

Relative paths work relative to the current working directory. Maven does not set it, so it is inherited from whatever value it had in the Java process your code is executing in.
The only reliable way is to figure it out in your own code. Depending on how you do things, there are several ways to do so. See How to get the real path of Java application at runtime? for suggestions. You are most likely looking at this.getClass().getProtectionDomain().getCodeSource().getLocation() and then you know where the class file is and can navigate relative to that.

Why does it report "No such file or dirctory"? The relative path should work. Right?
wrong.
Your classes are compiled to $PROJECT_ROOT/target/classes
and your resources are copied to the same folder keeping their relative paths below src/main/resources.
The file will be located relative to the classpath of which the root is $PROJECT_ROOT/target/classes. Therefore you have to write in your Pdf.java:
File file = new File("/files/x.pdf");
Your relative path will be evaluated from the projects current working directory which is $PROJECT_ROOT (AFAIR).
But it does not matter because you want that to work in your final application and not only in your build environment. Therefore you should access the file with getClass().getResource("/path/to/file/within/classpath") which searches the file in the class path of which the root is $PROJECT_ROOT/target/classes.

No the way you are referencing the files is according to your file system. Java knows about the classpath not the file system if you want to reference something like that you have to use the fully qualified name of the file.
Also I do not know if File constructor works with the classpath since it's an abstraction to manage the file system it will depend where the application is run from. Say it is run from the target directory at the same level as source in that case you have to go one directory up and then on src then test the resources the files and finally in x.pdf.
Since you are using a resources folder I think you want the file to be on the classpath and then you can load a resource with:
InputStream in = this.getClass().getClassLoader()
.getResourceAsStream("<path in classpath>");
Then you can create a FileInputStream or something to wrap around the file. Otherwise use the fully qualiefied name and put it somewere like /home/{user}/files/x.pdf.

How to copy directory that's injected as Resource?

My Spring application has a Maven dependency on app-resources.jar which contains the directory app-resources (as well as the META-INF dir, which I don't care about).
I need to copy the full contents of that folder, without knowing the list of contained files and subfolders.
My first instinct was to try, at runtime, to inject the folder as a Spring resource :
// This is actually injected from app-resources.jar
#Value("classpath:/app-resources/")
private Resource appResource;
/** Copies the static resources to the NFS target folder. */
private void publishResources(final File targetPath) {
File appResourceDir = getFileFromResource???(appResource);
FileUtils.copyDirectory(appResourceDir, targetPath);
}
But I couldn't find a way to view that Resource as a directory. I also considered injecting the jar itself as a resource, and unpacking it (using a GzipInputStream). But I don't know if that is possible either.
Does anyone have a good solution to that problem ? Compile-time solutions (using maven) are welcome too.
EDIT to reply to a comment. The architecture of this application is a bit unusual but it's not in my power to change. We have a frontend project that generates a static html/js website at compile time (that's what the app-resources.jar is). At runtime we want to publish multiple instances of this static site, each with different data files (so we copy the static content, and put specific data files in the site's data/ directory).

Off the cuff answer, perhaps you could get the full class path.
System.out.println(System.getProperty("java.class.path"));
You can then parse out the path for the jar you are interested in and then unzip the required paths to your desired directory.

How do I access the resources directory for a calling program in Java

I have a library which is used by a program. This library loads a special directory in the resources folder.
in the library I have the method
public class DataRegistry{
public static File getSpecialDirectory(){
String resourceName = Thread.currentThread().getContextClassLoader().getResource("data").getFile().replace("%20", " ");
File file = new File(resourceName);
return file;
}
}
in my program I have the main method
public static void main(String args[]){
System.out.println(Data.getSpecialDirectory());
}
When I execute the getSpecialDirectory() in a junit test within the data program, the resource is fetched and all is well.
When I execute the getSpecialDirectory() in the main method outside the data program (imported jar) I get the jars data directory and not the directory the program executing the thread is expecting.
I figured getting the parent class loader would have solved this issue... I believe I may have a fundamental issue in my understanding here.
For clarity:
(library)
Line 15 of this file: https://gist.github.com/AnthonyClink/11275442
(Usage)
Line 31 of this file:
https://gist.github.com/AnthonyClink/11275661
My poms may have something to do with it, so sharing them is probably important:\
(Library)
https://github.com/Clinkworks/Neptical/blob/master/pom.xml
(Usage)
https://github.com/Clinkworks/Neptical-Maven-Plugin/blob/master/pom.xml

Maven uses the target/classes and target/test-classes directories to compose the classpath used to run unit tests. The content of your src/main/resources and src/test/resources gets copied to these locations together with the compiled java sources (the .class files).
java.lang.ClassLoader.getResource returns a java.net.URL.
In the unit test situation, ClassLoader.getResource returns a file:// schemed URL, and your code works as expected.
When your code is executed when packaged in a jar file, ClassLoader.getResource no longer returns a file:// schemed URL. It can't because the resource is no longer a separate entity in a file system - it's buried inside the jar file. What you actually get is a jar:file:// schemed URL.
jar: URLs cannot be accessed through a [java.io.File] object.
If you only need to read the content of the resource you should use java.lang.ClassLoader.getResourceAsStream(...) and read the content from that.
Note that it is not possible to update the content of class loader resources.

Do you want the directory where the Java program was loaded from ? Can try
File f = new File(".").getCanconicalFile();
Or if you want all the places could try parsing the classpath from System.env or use the default class loader
If you want a directory relative to the jar from where your classes were loaded: Quoting from http://www.nakov.com/blog/2008/06/11/finding-the-directory-where-your-java-class-file-is-loaded-from/
URL classesRootDir = getClass().getProtectionDomain().getCodeSource().getLocation();
The above returns the base directory used when loading your .class
files. It does not contain the package. It contains the classpath
directory only. For example, in a console application the above
returns someting like this:
file:/C:/Documents%20and%20Settings/Administrator/workspace/TestPrj/bin/
In a Web application it returns someting like this:
file:/C:/Tomcat/webapps/MyApp/WEB-INF/classes/
FYI This might apply if the user id running program cannot read all folders: http://docs.oracle.com/javase/7/docs/api/java/lang/Class.html#getProtectionDomain%28%29
or pass a .class object of the calling class as a parameter and get its classloader

There is no guarantee that you have a directory for your resources as far as I know. Java provide methods to get a resource as a InputStream, but nothing that can easily get the File for a resource, although it is possible to get the URL for a given resource.
If you need a special working directory in your application, I recommend having that passed as a system property, a program parameter, a web application parameter, or something else that lets you know where your application files are. You can even populate this directory with a ZIP file that you include as a resource in your application, as the ZIP libraries in Java do accept input streams as parameters.

While user #tgkprog is right and his answer correct, I can hardly imagine that you really want what you seem to have asked for and what he correctly answered in (3). Please edit your question and explain
what the output should look like if resourceName would be printed to the console,
if you really want the JAR file's location (in my test case that would be something like file:/C:/Users/Alexander/.m2/repository/com/clinkworks/neptical/0.0.1-SNAPSHOT/data, which does not make sense because you do not want to read from or even write to the local Maven cache),
or if you maybe rather want to read a resource directly from the JAR file or any other location such as the current working directory etc.
Otherwise I am afraid there is no good way to answer the question.

Where to place a file if it is getting accessed using ClassLoader.getSystemResource in WebApplication

I am using one third party jar in my code. In the jar file , in one of the classes, when I opened the class using de-compiler, the code below is written:
java.net.URL fileURL = ClassLoader.getSystemResource("SOAPConfig.xml");
Now I am using this in my webapplication, where should I place this SOAPConfig.xml so that it will find the fileURL.
Note: I have tried putting this XML in WEB-INF/classes folder. But it is not working. Your help will be appreciated.
In Addition: In the explaination you have given, It is telling me not to use this code snippet inside the third party jar in this way...What is the exact usage of this statement

ClassLoader.getSystemResource will load the resource from the system classloader, which uses the classpath of the application as started from the command line. Any classloaders created by the application at runtime (i.e. the one that looks in WEB-INF/classes) are not on the system classpath.
You need to
Look through the script that starts your server, find out which directories are on the classpath there, and put your SOAPConfig.xml in one of those. If necessary, change the classpath in the script to look in a separate directory that's just used for your config file.
Track down the person who used ClassLoader.getSystemResource in the library, kick them squarely in the nuts, and tell them never to do that again.

Java file path in web project

I need to access the resource files in my web project from a class. The problem is that the paths of my development environment are different from the ones when the project is deployed.
For example, if I want to access some css files while developing I can do like this:
File file = new File("src/main/webapp/resources/styles/some.css/");
But this may not work once it's deployed because there's no src or main directories in the target folder. How could I access the files consistently?

You seem to be storing your CSS file in the classpath for some unobvious reason. The folder name src is typical as default name of Eclipse's project source folder. And that it apparently magically works as being a relative path in the File constructor (bad, bad), only confirms that you're running this in the IDE context.
This is indeed not portable.
You should not be using File's constructor. If the resource is in the classpath, you need to get it as resource from the classpath.
InputStream input = getClass().getResourceAsStream("/main/webapp/resources/styles/some.css");
// ...
Assuming that the current class is running in the same context, this will work regardless of the runtime environment.
See also:
getResourceAsStream() vs FileInputStream
Update: ah, the functional requirement is now more clear.
Actually I want to get lastModified from the file. Is it possible with InputStream? –
Use getResource() instead to obtain it as an URL. Then you can open the connection on it and request for the lastModified.
URL url = getClass().getResource("/main/webapp/resources/styles/some.css");
long lastModified = url.openConnection().getLastModified();
// ...

If what you're looking to do is open a file that's within the browser-visible part of the application, I'd suggest using ServletContext.getRealPath(...)
Thus:
File f = new File(this.getServletContext().getRealPath("relative/path/to/your/file"));
Note: if you're not within a servlet, you may have to jump through some additional hoops to get the ServletContext, but it should always be available to you in a web environment. This solution also allows you to put the .css file where the user's browser can see it, whereas putting it under /WEB-INF/ would hide the file from the user.

Put your external resources in a sub-directory of your project's WEB-INF folder. E.g., put your css resources in WEB-INF/styles and you should be able to access them as:
new File("styles/some.css");
Unless you're not using a standard WAR for deployment, in which case, you should explain your setup.

Typically resource files are placed in your war along with your class files. Thus they will be on the classpath and can be looked up via
getClass.getResource("/resources/styles/some.css")
or by opening a File as #ig0774 mentioned.
If the resource is in a directory that is not deployed in the WAR (say you need to change it without redeploying), then you can use a VM arg to define the path to your resource.
-Dresource.dir=/src/main/webapp/resources
and do a lookup via that variable to load it.

In Java web project, the standard directory like:
{WEB-ROOT} /
/WEB-INF/
/WEB-INF/lib/
/WEB-INF/classes
So, if you can get the class files path in file system dynamic,
you can get the resources file path.
you can get the path ( /WEB-INF/classes/ ) by:
this.getClass().getProtectionDomain().getCodeSource().getLocation().getPath()
so, then the next ...