Question

I am using Tomcat. I would like to put the config file in WEB-INF instead of the default root class path which is WEB-INF/classes. Currently I put the config.xml in WEB-INF and use the following relative addressing to locate it:

InputStream input = Thread.currentThread()
    .getContextClassLoader()
    .getResourceAsStream("..//config.xml");

Is this the correct way to do?

Or should I use the getServletContext().getRealPath("config.xml") first? But I don’t know how to obtain the getServletContext() in a .java. (I tried to new HttpServlet for obtaining getServletContext(), but since it is an abstract class, can’t be instanced… how can I get the getServletContext()?)

Answer 1

The method getRealPath() is not guaranteed to work, e.g. if your webapp is not expanded from a war file there is no ‘real path’ on the filesystem to a file inside the war file.

Since you say you are using a ServletContextListener, you can get the ServletContext out of the ServletContextEvent:

sce.getServletContext().getResourceAsStream("/WEB-INF/config.xml");