Question

I have a small maven application, it loads an xml file from the classpath and does some manipulation. It runs fine from eclipse, but when I run maven:assembly, and get an executable jar with dependecies, the program executes up to the point where it needs to get the xml file, and then it gives:

    java.io.FileNotFoundException: /home/ubuntu/Documents/workspaces/workspace-sts-2.7.2/test/target/file:
/home/ubuntu/Documents/workspaces/workspace-sts-2.7.2/test/target/test-0.0.1-SNAPSHOT-jar-with-dependencies.jar!/test.xml (No such file or directory)

the test.xml file is most certainly in the jar, and like i said, it runs and finds the file just fine when running from eclipse. I believe the manifest file is setup correctly:

Manifest-Version: 1.0
Archiver-Version: Plexus Archiver
Created-By: Apache Maven
Built-By: ubuntu
Build-Jdk: 1.6.0_26
Main-Class: org.test.test1.App
Class-Path:.

here is the code that loads the xml file:

  //load xml file from classpath
  DocumentBuilder builder = factory.newDocumentBuilder();
  ClassLoader classLoader = Thread.currentThread().getContextClassLoader();
  URL classpathFileLocation =                 
        classLoader.getResource("test.xml");
  File file = new File(classpathFileLocation.getFile());
  Document doc = builder.parse(file);

Answer 1

Try changing this:

URL classpathFileLocation = classLoader.getResource("test.xml");
File file = new File(classpathFileLocation.getFile());

to this:

InputStream is = classLoader.getResourceAsStream("test.xml");
Document doc = builder.parse(is);  // Or look at the builder API to see what accepts InputStream

I don’t know if it makes any difference, but I would use the class loader for the current class.