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Current directory of a web app in netbeans

I am working on a web app i have java files in it which uses certain files.I want to specify these files using relative path in java so that it doesn't produce mobility issue.But Where should i place a file in a web app so that i can use relative path.? I have tried placing the files under source package, web folder, directly under the web-application.Please help.Thanks in advance

The simplest way to get the current directory of a java application is :
System.out.println(new File(".").getAbsolutePath());
Like that you can consider the given path as the root of your application.
Cheers,
Maxime.

Read the file as a resource. Put it somewhere in the src. For instance
src/resources/myresource.txt
Then you can just do
InputStream is = getClass().getResourceAsStream("/resources/myresource.txt");
Note: if you are using maven, then you are more accustomed to something like this
src/main/resources/myresource.txt
With maven, everything in the main/resources folder gets built to the root, so you would leave out the resources in your path
InputStream is = getClass().getResourceAsStream("/myresource.txt");

Resources folder in a Java EE application

I'm developing a simple mail sender as Java EE application.
The project structure is shown as follows:
To properly setup email contents, I need to read the *.vm files placed inside the resource folder, that I supposed to have as path classpath:/templates/mail/*.vm (as with Spring)... But my supposition is wrong!
Which is the right path to use?
Should I have to use the META-INF folder? Is this solution more
java-ee-compliant? In that case, where have I to put the META-INF folder inside my project structure?
Update:
I packaged the project as .war, then I putted the files in:
/src/main/webapp/WEB-INF/classes/templates/mail/
Then:
org.apache.velocity.Template t = myVelocityEngine.getTemplate("classpath:/templates/mail/account_to_confirm.vm",
"UTF-8");
Nonetheless, the app returns an error at runtime:
Unable to find resource 'classpath:/templates/mail/account_to_confirm.vm'
What am I doing wrong?
Just to better understand:
Supposing that I'd like to deploy this app as jar (removing the servlet class, of course): in that case, should I have to edit the folder layout in order to still use the same path into the source code?

I think the problem is due to the prefix classpath:: where did you find that you have to use it?
You might find useful understanding how to initialize VelocityEngine reading Loading velocity template inside a jar file and how Configuring Resource Loaders in Velocity.

If you can, use Classloader.getResourceAsStream("templates/mail/*.vm"); or similar getResourceAsURL method.
If not, take a look at where files from resources are placed inside WAR. In your case, the file should be in /WEB-INF/classes/templates/mail .

cloudbees & ESAPI - how do I point to the ESAPI directory?

I'm using ESAPI for my project, and added the ESAPI configuration directory to src/main/resources so it is copied to my WAR file (I downloaded the WAR from cloudbees, I can see it was put in WEB-INF/classes/esapi/ directory)
Locally, I just point to where the directory is and all works fine, but on cloudbees it just doesn't work for me.
In order to access its properties, ESAPI project tries all kinds of stuff, including checking the org.owasp.esapi.resources system property, so I've added the following code to cloudbees-web.xml:
<sysprop name="org.owasp.esapi.resources" value="WEB-INF/classes/esapi/" />
and I can see that the system property value is found because of the following error in the logs:
Not found in 'org.owasp.esapi.resources' directory or file not readable: /var/genapp/apps/akld3873/WEB-INF/classes/esapi/ESAPI.properties
so it finds the system property (because the path is like I've specified), but when it looks for the actual directory and files in it, I guess the directory is either not there or not readable.
Do I need to move it somewhere else? Inside the WEB-INF directory maybe? Is the setting not right? I've read that others solved similar issues by building a JAR just for this directory, but this doesn't seem like a good solution, there must be a simple setup that will work for cloudbees.

Design for ESAPI lib to require a directory access to configuration is not very flexible.
A general purpose option is to use ServletContext.getRealPath to resolve the absolute filesystem path to this directory and pass it to ESAPI.
Another option is for you to have some init code to copy WEB-INF/classes/esapi content in a temporary directory (using java.io.temp system property to point to the currently configured temp dir for your app) and point ESAPI lib to this path.

Ok so after searching and testing, I finally figured it out.
Cloudbees deploys your web app to the following directory:
staxcat/install/webapp.war/
notice that this is a relative path, with prefix of this path attached it looks something like this:
/var/genapp/apps/xxxxxxxx/staxcat/install/webapp.war/WEB-INF/esapi/ESAPI.properties
so, in order to get ESAPI to work, I had to set the following in cloudbees-web.xml:
<sysprop name="org.owasp.esapi.resources" value="staxcat/install/webapp.war/WEB-INF/esapi" />
this will enable ESAPI to find the directory if in your project it is located under:
src/main/webapp/WEB-INF/esapi
and you should get the following log line:
Found in 'org.owasp.esapi.resources' directory: /var/genapp/apps/xxxxxxxxx/staxcat/install/webapp.war/WEB-INF/esapi/ESAPI.properties

Current / default directory in vaadin project

I am working on reports. Now I have a jrxml file which I have to load so that I can parse it. However, the problem is, I want to load the file with its name directly
String path = "myreport.jrxml";
But I am unable to find that where should I place that file in my project so that the above path is valid. In simple java project, we just place our desired file in our project folder where src folder is placed, but it is not working in vaadin project. So where should I place my file.
Thanks.

Are you deploying your project to a web server? Then you would need to find out what is the default working directory of that web server.

You could use:
JRXmlLoader.load("/myreport.jrxml");
or if you want to test if the resource is found and take another tries you could load it as a resource and pass it load method from JRXmlLoader as follows:
JRXmlLoader.load(getClass().getResourceAsStream("/myreport.jrxml"));

Java (maven web app), getting full file path for file in resources folder?

I'm working with a project that is setup using the standard Maven directory structure so I have a folder called "resources" and within this I have made a folder called "fonts" and then put a file in it. I need to pass in the full String file path (of a file that is located, within my project structure, at resources/fonts/somefont.ttf) to an object I am using, from a 3rd party library, as below, I have searched on this for a while but have become a bit confused as to the proper way to do this. I have tried as below but it isn't able to find it. I looked at using ResourceBundle but that seemed to involve making an actual File object when I just need the path to pass into a method like the one below (don't have the actual method call in front of me so just giving an example from my memory):
FontFactory.somemethod("resources/fonts/somefont.ttf");
I had thought there was a way, with a project with standard Maven directory structure to get a file from the resource folder without having to use the full relative path from the class / package. Any advice on this is greatly appreciated.
I don't want to use a hard-coded path since different developers who work on the project have different setups and I want to include this as part of the project so that they get it directly when they checkout the project source.
This is for a web application (Struts 1.3 app) and when I look into the exploded WAR file (which I am running the project off of through Tomcat), the file is at:
<Exploded war dir>/resources/fonts/somefont.ttf

Code:
import java.io.File;
import org.springframework.core.io.*;
public String getFontFilePath(String classpathRelativePath) {
Resource rsrc = new ClassPathResource(classpathRelativePath);
return rsrc.getFile().getAbsolutePath();
}
In your case, classpathRelativePath would be something like "/resources/fonts/somefont.ttf".

You can use the below mentioned to get the path of the file:
String fileName = "/filename.extension"; //use forward slash to recognize your file
String path = this.getClass().getResource(fileName).toString();
use/pass the path to your methods.

If your resources directory is in the root of your war, that means resources/fonts/somefont.ttf would be a "virtual path" where that file is available. You can get the "real path"--the absolute file system path--from the ServletContext. Note (in the docs) that this only works if the WAR is exploded. If your container runs the app from the war file without expanding it, this method won't work.

You can look up the answer to the question on similar lines which I had
Loading XML Files during Maven Test run
The answer given by BobG should work. Though you need to keep in mind that path for the resource file is relative to path of the current class. Both resources and java source files are in classpath