Question

I have a Swing Java program that reads *.txt files in a resource folder called ‘res’ containing subfolders of different kind of JSONs. When I run directly from Eclipse, all is fine. If I create an executable jar it doesn’t work. I managed to make it work with an horrifying solution, putting all my text files in the package where they are called.

To read them I use this line of code:

InputStream is = this.getClass().getResourceAsStream(file + ".txt");

where file is a string. I thought this would search in the jar the specified file but obviously not. I tried to put the path to the files, res/subfolder/name_of_file.txt and subfolder/name_of_file.txt but to no avail.
Here is the structure of my project

Project
   src
      com.package
   res
      JSON_type1
      JSON_type2
         file.txt

From com.package, I have a class that must read from JSON_type2/file.txt. Besides the obvious reason to keep my text file organized in the subfolders is that my GUI will populates a drop down list with the content of those subfolders.

From what I’ve gather from other questions here, getResourceAsStream() would have been my solution if I wanted to keep my text files in the package where they are called. Other than that I found something about subclassing ClassLoader and overwriting findResource(). If possible I want to avoid this solution as I’m far from being familiar with that class and its functionalities.

Should you need more informations, let me know.

Thank you

P.S.: This question arose from my previous question here

Answer 1

// added leading / to indicate search from root of class-path
String file = "/res/JSON_type2/file.txt";
InputStream is = this.getClass().getResourceAsStream(file);