Question

My application is configured by some Spring XML configuration files.

Is it good practice in Java to include the XML files in the classpath, and reference them in my application using the classpath?

Answer 1

I usually look in a system property first then the classpath. so:

java -DconfigFile=/filelocation/file.xml

can be read as:

String propfile = System.getProperty(configFile);
if (propfile != null) {
 // read in file
  new File(propfile);
 ...
} else {
  // read in file from classpath
  getClass.getResource("/configfile.xml")
}