Question

OK. So I have a pretty simple question: I want to be able to load a resource (a whole folder) from inside a running .jar file, but I have not been able to get it to work. This is what I have tried (if the class name were “myClass” and the folder being called “myFolder”), but it always throws a NullPointerException:

URL folderURL = myClass.class.getClassLoader().getResource("myFolder/");
String folderPath = folderURL.getPath();
File myFolder = new File(folderPath);

The NullPointerException is always thrown before I create “myFolder”.

Some more info: I have to access the folder from static context. The class that is accessing the folder is NOT in the same directory as the folder itself is in. (The folder is in the root directory inside the jar, the class is a couple subpackages down.)

Does anyone have a solution to my problem? Sorry if I used wrong terminology :P, but anything you can do to help is appreciated.

Answer 1

There’s no way this will work. You’re trying to create a File object from a resource inside a JAR. That isn’t going to happen. The best method to load resources is to make one your package folders a resource folder, then make a Resources.jar in it or something, dump your resources in the same dir, and then use Resources.class.getResourceAsStream(resFileName) in your other Java class files.

If you need to ‘brute force’ the subfiles in the JAR directory pointed to by the URL given by getResource(..), use the following (although it’s a bit of a hack!). It will work for a normal filesystem too:

  /**
   * List directory contents for a resource folder. Not recursive.
   * This is basically a brute-force implementation.
   * Works for regular files and also JARs.
   * 
   * @author Greg Briggs
   * @param clazz Any java class that lives in the same place as the resources you want.
   * @param path Should end with "/", but not start with one.
   * @return Just the name of each member item, not the full paths.
   * @throws URISyntaxException 
   * @throws IOException 
   */
  String[] getResourceListing(Class clazz, String path) throws URISyntaxException, IOException {
      URL dirURL = clazz.getClassLoader().getResource(path);
      if (dirURL != null && dirURL.getProtocol().equals("file")) {
        /* A file path: easy enough */
        return new File(dirURL.toURI()).list();
      } 

      if (dirURL == null) {
        /* 
         * In case of a jar file, we can't actually find a directory.
         * Have to assume the same jar as clazz.
         */
        String me = clazz.getName().replace(".", "/")+".class";
        dirURL = clazz.getClassLoader().getResource(me);
      }

      if (dirURL.getProtocol().equals("jar")) {
        /* A JAR path */
        String jarPath = dirURL.getPath().substring(5, dirURL.getPath().indexOf("!")); //strip out only the JAR file
        JarFile jar = new JarFile(URLDecoder.decode(jarPath, "UTF-8"));
        Enumeration<JarEntry> entries = jar.entries(); //gives ALL entries in jar
        Set<String> result = new HashSet<String>(); //avoid duplicates in case it is a subdirectory
        while(entries.hasMoreElements()) {
          String name = entries.nextElement().getName();
          if (name.startsWith(path)) { //filter according to the path
            String entry = name.substring(path.length());
            int checkSubdir = entry.indexOf("/");
            if (checkSubdir >= 0) {
              // if it is a subdirectory, we just return the directory name
              entry = entry.substring(0, checkSubdir);
            }
            result.add(entry);
          }
        }
        return result.toArray(new String[result.size()]);
      } 

      throw new UnsupportedOperationException("Cannot list files for URL "+dirURL);
  }

You can then modify the URL given by getResource(..) and append the file on the end, and pass these URLs into getResourceAsStream(..), ready for loading. If you didn’t understand this, you need to read up on classloading.