Develop Reference

Tomcat Web Application Resource File placement

I have a little Java Web Application project using IntelliJ, Tomcat and jersey.
My project structure looks like this:
src
main
java
package
Main.java
resources
test
web
WEB-INF
web.xml
index.jsp
I want to add a resource xml file. It should be deployed with some initial values and it should be possible to read from the file and also to write to it - all from java code. It should not be accessible directly from, let's say, a browser.
Where should I put that file and how can I access it when I've put it there?

Java application with simple Web Server exported as JAR

I have created a simple Web Server application using Java APIs.
Web server is working as expected and I am able to get the HTML pages in the browser.
I am developing this Java App on a Windows Machine. For testing I am exporting my app as JAR and then testing it on Target Device which is a Linux Box. In my app I have created a "webroot" folder and I am storing all the HTML files, that web server needs to serve.
So when I create JAR file of the app then it has "webroot" folder with all the html files in it. When I run this application on Windows then I am able to get the html pages. But when I run this application on Linux box as a JAR then I am not able to retrieve html files. Also when I copy my "webroot" folder outside the JAR then it works and I am able to see the HTML pages getting delivered in the browser.
So is there any way I can access html pages which are in the jar file itself without copying them outside?
My Project Folder structure is as below:
/src
-com.myprj.server -> contains server Java files
/webroot -> all the html pages
/bin -> jar files as per the above package path
/myprj.jar -> Project jar file
So above jar file has the webroot folder. And from the code I am accessing it as "webroot/FileName.html". If I keep webroot as in the same folder as jar then it does work.

Without seeing how you're actually serving the content, it's hard to say what you're doing wrong, but you can always use Class.getResourceAsStream() to access the resources from the classpath. If you're running it as a jar file, then the contents of the jar file are included in the classpath too.
To serve content outside of the jar file, either include your "webroot" in the classpath, or create some kind of mechanism to first try the classpath and then an outside path.

Eclipse Java Servlet access to higher level directory

I've installed Eclipse with web development and during download have installed Tomcat7 to dir E:\Eclipse\tomcat7.
When in Eclipse and trying to test the program I'm getting a realPath of
C:/Users/user/Documents/eclipseJEEWorkspace/javaWebPages/.metadata/.plugins/org.eclipse.wst.server.core/tmp0/wtpwebapps/org.example.web/WEB-INF/classes/
as my real path and not what I expect which is E:\Eclipse\tomcat7\webapps\org.example.web/WEB-INF/classes/
1) how do I get the real path of the servlet rather than the temporary path...
or am I missing something with how Eclipse uses the installed server? If this is the way then do I have to continuously create the WAR and fiddle around recreating/deleting all the time?
The reason for this is I'm also trying to get a JAVA Servlet getting access to a file in a path higher than webapps. I'm new to servlets....
My development includes third party software that all reference an individual file our.properties so changing the structure is unfortunately not a option.
My directory structure is:
/tomcat
/mycompany
/properties
our.properties //the file we want to access
/*otherfiles
/html
/*not used in this context but to show usage
/javascript
/*not used in this context but to show usage
/webapps
/org.example01.web
/META-INF
/WEB-INF
/org.example02.web
/META-INF
/WEB-INF
/org.example03.web
/META-INF
/WEB-INF
How do I tell my Servlet to access the our.properties file?
I've tried getPath, getResource but without getting the first bit to work, I doubt I'll be getting anywhere fast.
Thanks

When you run Tomcat under Eclipse, via the Tomcat plugin, the webapps path is changed. Eclipse uses .metadata/.plugins/org.eclipse.wst.server.core/tmp0/wtpwebapps/ folder to deploy the project. That's not a temporary path, it's the actual path since your web application is deployed there.
If you run tomcat from command line, or as a service and deploy your web application, you'll see that the path of the servlet will be as you expected.
In order the change the default path to deploy for Eclipse, double click to your Tomcat under Servers view and modify Server locations section.

How can I create a file in my project folder through Servlet?

My objective is to create file in one of the folders of my Web-App such that when user clicks a download button, it's gonna download the file from that particular folder. For example, my file resides in "MyProjectName/WEB-INF/NewFolder/myfile.xls". Now, how do I create "myfile.xls" in that folder?
Here's what I have already tried:
I have set the file path to "/WEB-INF/NewFolder/" using this code in my Servlet:
String filePath = getServletContext().getRealPath("/WEB-INF/NewFolder/myfile.xls");
But the problem is, the value of "filePath" in the above code is:
C:\Users\MyUserName\workspace\.metadata\.plugins\org.eclipse.wst.server.core\tmp1\wtpwebapps\MyProjetName\WEB-INF\NewFolder\myfile.xls
Hence "myfile.xls" is not getting created in "/MyProject/WEB-INF/NewFolder" and getting created in the metadata folder instead. Because of this, it's working only in my machine ie., localhost. When I am trying to access my application through another machine I am not able to download the file. I guess I am passing the absolute path to the JSP page which makes it impossible to download it from a different machine. So could anyone please let me know where I have gone wrong in doing this?

Your webapp is deployed to a web server on runtime and filePath points somewhere inside deployment folder not to a project one.
Anyway, why do you want to write into WEB-INF? If you for example redeploy application, then all files inside usually will be removed. Isn't better to use some folder inside server (for example in tomcat we can use ${catalina.home}/myfiles folder or some other outside web server?

Website directory structure different from eclipse

I am coding a website using java servlets and am using eclipse and tomcat. When I test it using localhost, it works fine. But when I am deploying it on my actual website, the directory structure is messed up and the files are not called properly.
My eclipse directory structure on localhost is
Project Name
.src/packageName/java files
.WebContent/HTML files.
When I make a call from the html files, I use the relative location and tomcat automatically knows to look in the src/packageName folder. For example, from the /WebContent/login.html page makes a onClick call as follows,
. This will automatically trigger the java file in /src/packageName/welcome
When I am deploying it in my actual website, the WebContent/login.html is throwing an error WebContent/welcome file is not found. How do I tell my website to search in /src/packageName folder?

Hmm...have you been sure to package the application as a war for deployment.