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Whats the best way to specify a path to read from class-path even if project was a jar

I am trying to read a Properties file in a maven nature project using the Properties.load(); I am specifying a path as a string ex. "./someFolder/file.properties",
but when I try to use my project as dependency in other projects I am forced to copy those files to the other project , simply because the "." means current directory.
Is there a way to specify a path so it will always be valid despite where I am calling it from ? ,
I have tried using the MyClass.class.getClassLoader().getResourceAsStream() but I am having trouble using it , it worked sometimes and failed other times.

There are lots of misconceptions in your question.
"." means classPath
No. When used inside a filesystem path (i.e. a path passed to the constructor of a File, or FileReader, or FileInputStream), "." means the current directory.
When used in a resource path (i.e. passed to Class[Loader].getResource[AsStream]()), it's invalid.
The trick is to carefully read the documentation.
getResourceAsStream() expects a /-separated path.
When using ClassLoader.getResource[AsStream](), this path always starts from the root of the classpath. So you would pass a path looking exactly like a fully qualified class name, except the dots would be replaced by slashes. So, com/foo/bar.properties looks for a resource named bar.properties, in the package com.foo.
When using SomeClass.class.getResource[AsStream](), either the path starts with a /, and the path starts from the root of the classpath, or it doesn't, and it starts from the package of SomeClass. So, if SomeClass is in the package com.foo, using /com/foo/bar.properties is equivalent to using bar.properties.
It's hard to tell what you're doing wrong, since you're not providing any detail. But you really need to understand the difference between opening a file on the file system, and reading a resource loaded by the class loader. Sometimes, the resources just happen to be loaded by the class loader from the filesystem, because the classpath happens to contain directories, and not just jar files.

I noticed that my problem was that I had my properties files in the project path itself, and that the ClassLoader.getResource[AsStream](); looks is the target/classes folder, and that I didn't have the resources folder in my project.
I solved it my adding the resources folder to my build path and adding my files in the src/main/resources as the following src/main/resources/foo/bar.properties and loading it by SomeClass.class.getClassLoader().loadResourceAsStream("foo/bar.properties");.

Relative path using Level hierarchy(../../)

I want to use the relative path in xml files in our project. I have the files in the following location.
D:/SDC-Builds/SRDM2.3.0/SRDM/Svr/IdP/IdPserver/conf/attribute-r.xml
I have other xml file which needs to ref the above location, I use the following relative path to be independent of machines and folder names.
In D:/SDC-Builds/SRDM2.3.0/SRDM/Svr/IdP/IdPserver/others/service.xml, i am using the code like below
service.xml
<srv:ConfigurationResource="../../../../../../IdP/IdPserver/conf/attribute-r.xml">
</srv>
Please tell me am i using proper convention to refer the attribute-r.xml ?

If your Project Root Directory is SRDM, then you need to get back from your executable path.
Say you have your exe file at SRDM/Svr/bin/EXECUTABLE.exe then,
you need to mention in xml as
<srv:ConfigurationResource="../IdP/IdPserver/conf/attribute-r.xml"></srv>
ie. Current working directory is SRDM/Svr/bin/ and from that you need to get back up to common junction[Svr] in your case.

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

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