Develop Reference

Absolute path of a file inside a project package

I've created a file inside a project package using this code:
File xmlFile = new File("src/com/company/project/xml/tags.xml");
I am able to read the file while running from eclipse. However, after creating .jar, I'm unable to read the file. So I want to put absolute path while reading the file from the project package. How it can be done? Help and suggestions are appreciated.

In most cases, IDE's will include no Java files in the resulting Jar. Most IDE's will also include the src directory in the classpath when you run/debug the program from within them.
As a general rule of thumb, never include src in any path, src will simply not exist once the program is built.
Instead you need to make use of Class#getResource or Class#getResourceAsStream, depending on your needs. You should remember, you should never treat an "embedded" resource as a File, as in most cases it won't be, it'll be a stream of bytes in a zip file.
Something like...
URL xmlFile = getClass().getResource("/com/company/project/xml/tags.xml");
will return a URL reference to the resource. Remember, if you need a InputStream, you'll have to Class#getResourceAsStream.
If you want the resource to be writable, then you will need to find a different location to store it, as embedded resources are read only

Try with getClass().getResource()
new File(getClass().getResource("src/com/company/project/xml/tags.xml").toURI());

How to get the absolute path of the executed jar?

How do I get the location of the executed jar? I found a lot of solutions but none of them work for me. When I run them in my IDE everything is fine. As soon as I build a jar file and run it with java -jar myapp.jar the output is like /.../myapp.jar!/foo/bar
I will run the code in myapp.jar - not in any library.
Location of jar: /home/me/dev/myapp/myapp.jar
Expected output: /home/me/dev/myapp/
I don't want the working directory as I would get with System.getProperty("user.dir");
Why I want to do this:
I want to store and load a file beside the actual jar. Like
/home/me/bin/myapp/myapp.jar
/home/me/bin/myapp/license.key
I want to avoid storing the file into some generic folder like System.getProperty("user.home");. And I don't want to store the file within the jar file.

java.nio.file.Paths.get(".").toAbsolutePath() will return absolute path to current directory.

I use something along these lines:
[YourClass].class.getProtectionDomain().getCodeSource().getLocation().getPath()
Regards

Load a file outside of a Jar

I have a folder called lib that contains all my Jar files and in one of the Jar files class, I have a main method which is called by a batch file. In the same folder location as my lib, I have another folder structure path/to/a/resource/myresource.txt
How can I load this file from a class inside the Jar file? I tried the following and both resulted in null:
getClass().getResource("path/to/a/resource/myresource.txt")
getClass().getClassLoader().getResource("path/to/a/resource/myresource.txt")
Any ideas? Even with an absolute path, it failed! Any suggestions?

You can use:
getClass().getResourceAsStream("path/to/a/resource/myresource.txt")
However, for this to work, you need to add the path '.' to the Class-Path entry of the JAR's MANIFEST.MF file.
http://docs.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/deployment/jar/downman.html

Two things you tried are used to read files from class-path since this folder is not on your classpath you can read it directly with any of the java File IO classes.

File file = new File("C:/folder/myFile.txt");
or if you know the relative path:
File file = new File("../../path/myFile.txt");

Your path seems not to be precise enough. Further, this question has been worked before.
Have a look here:
How to Load File Outside of, but Relative to, the JAR?
How to get the path of a running JAR file?

You can either load the file from file system
new FileReader(relativeOrAbsoluteFilesystemLocation)
or you can add the directory in question to your classpath:
java -cp "lib/*;lib" ...
and then use your original method.
(Unix uses : rather than ; as classpath separator)

How to use ClassLoader.getResources() in jar file

Problem statement:
I have a jar file with a set of configuration files in a package mycompany/configuration/file/.
I don't know the file names.
My intention is to load the file names at runtime from the jar file in which they are packaged and then use it in my application.
As far as I understood:
When I use the ClassLoader.getResources("mycompany/configuration/file/") I should be getting all the configuration files as URLs.
However, this is what is happening:
I get one URL object with URL like jar:file:/C:/myJarName.jar!mycompany/configuration/file/
Could you please let me know what I am doing wrong ?

For what you are trying to do I don't think it is possible.
getResource and getResources are about finding named resources within the classloader's classpath, not listing values beneath a directory or folder.
So for example ClassLoader.getResources("mycompany/configuration/file/Config.cfg") would return all the files named Config.cfg that existed in the mycompany/configuration/file path within the class loader's class path (I find this especially useful for loading version information personally).
In your case I think you might almost have half a solution. The URL you are getting back contains the source jar file (jar:file:/C:/myJarName.jar). You could use this information to crack open the jar file a read a listing of the entries, filtering those entries whose name starts with "mycompany/configuration/file/".
From there, you could then fall back on the getResource method to load a reference to each one (now that you have the name and path)

Why does the Java compiler say my file was not found in the class path when I can clearly see it in the class path?

I am using java -classpath $CLASSPATH ..., where $CLASSPATH has been set to /file1path/file1:/file2path/file2 and so on. Despite this, Java complains that file1 is not found. I tried to set -Dfile1=file:///fullpath/file1, but it still says it cannot find the file. Is there any reason why this might happen other than that I am not seeing a simpler problem like a typo or something (which I have checked for many times)?
More specifically, this.getClass().getClassLoader().getResourceAsStream(configurationFileName) is returning null.
The file that is not being found is a configuration file (.properties), not a JAR file.

You set a classpath to point to a directory containing something or an archive containing resources. I don't believe you can add a resource directly to the classpath.
Try setting your classpath to /file1path instead of /file1path/file1

The classpath should specify the directory where your package hierarchy rooted.
package org.djna, file system : C:/myhome/javastuff/org/djna/Myclass.java
classpath is set to c:/myhome/javastuff
If you are trying to open files from your application using getResourceAsStream() or some such the the details of the path depend on whether or not the filename has a leading /. Read the docs caefully and all will become clear.