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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-21T02:29:59+00:00

I have to use a library that accepts path to a directory and loads

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I have to use a library that accepts path to a directory and loads it via File(path);. What should be the path in tomcat webapp context ?

I always work with classpaths, but this API is really not thought through…

I don’t have experience with java execution context in tomcat, but it seems to me a bad idea doing something like this 

System.getProperty("catalina.base") + "webapps/app/WEB-INF/classes/profiles"

Does tomcat provides java execution (AKA $PWD) path for resources in application context ?

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    Use ServletContext#getRealPath() to convert a webapp-relative path to an absolute disk file system path. Given your example, the following should do:

    String path = getServletContext().getRealPath("/WEB-INF/classes/profiles");
File file = new File(path);
// ...

    Note that this requires that the WAR is expanded, otherwise it will return null. Tomcat by default expands the WAR, but some other servletcontainers/configs don’t. Keep this in mind with regard to portability.

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