I have a Java app which I am packaging to a Mac Application Bundle (That folder structure that contains all of the app but looks like a single executable file to the user).
My Problem:
I am reading and writing some config files in the local folder ("."). However, on Mac this seems to be the folder in which the application bundle is located (so usually the "Applications" folder and I obviously don't want that.
My question:
How can I store a file inside that bundle? How can I programmatically retrieve the bundle name to compute the fully qualified folder?
I know I could try to go the ClassLoader way, but I'd like to avoid that (for security reasons).
Or is there simply a better way how to store application cache and config data locally?
The Mac OS X Finder treats any directory whose name ends in .app as an application; right-click to Show Package Contents. It remains an otherwise normal directory for I/O purposes. This project is an example. See this answer regarding paths relative to the application bundle.
Addendum: Is there a better way how to store application cache and config data locally?
The example cited uses java.util.prefs.Preferences, but javax.jnlp.PersistenceService is an alternative.
Ok, the basic answer / solution is: don't do it.
The reason I originally wanted to do it was to cache larger amounts of data on the local HD. Java preferences are a good choice for config data (i.e. small data amounts) but fail to handle data in the megabyte size range.
My solution:
On MacOSX (System.getProperty("os.name").contains("Mac OS X")) I simply create a folder in the user's home folder (System.getProperty("user.home")). I prefix that folder with a . to ensure it is hidden from the user. This also ensures that I have write access to the folder (which could be a problem in the .app folder depending on where the user copies it)
On Windows (System.getProperty("os.name").contains("Windows")) I create that folder in the System.getenv("APPDATA") directory (note that this env variable only exists on Windows systems.
Now I have full access to the filesystem (even without admin rights) and can store as much data as I like.
Related
According to this acrticle , the EMF Client Platform demo application stores the objects you create either in an EMFstore or in local files. As I do not have an EMFstore, I thought the application would store the information in .xmi files or something like that. Whenever I close the application and relaunch it, my created projects and objects are loaded correctly. But I can't find any files in my workspace! And I am sure that I'm looking inside the correct workspace because I use the -data flag to launcht the application and the .metadata folder was created successfully. Any ideas?
I'm not sure if this is what you are looking for, but my created objects are stored in a folder named runtime-EclipseApplication side by side with the workspace folder. I assume your "created objects" is referring to the modelInstances like "TournamentPro" or "League" in the given example article. If you do not have these folders, you should check again if you really do not have an EMFstore.
I am writing an application (basically eclipse plugin), so there are few combo-box, drop-downs etc, which I am getting values for them dynamically via XML file. My doubt is which is the best way to store these files in a particular directory so that it can be read in both Windows as well as Linux.
Initially I tried to create a config path under {eclipse.home.location} like:
String finalPath = System.getProperty("eclipse.home.location") +"/myAppConfig";
and store all of my plugin's configuration there (not only configuration but few helper jars which I programatically read in my plugin). But there is a probabilty that Eclipse installation maybe in shared location and user may not have write access to it.
I also tried to store it in a program files directory using:
System.getenv("ProgramFiles");
But this fails under non-windows environments. So my question is can anyone shed a light on this so that I can store in some common directory where it is valid for both windows and linux?
Kindly let me know if my wordings are confusing. Or is it possible to store my config files under plugins directory and get the path like this /plugins/myConfigDir ?
Try using the getStateLocation() method in Plugin.
That will give you an IPath that points to a user specific workspace location.
I have created a dynamic web project, and use Apache Tomcat as a server.
In my servlet I'm creating a text file and want to reuse that in a JSP. However they are by default created in the installation folder of Eclipse when I do something as simple as the following:
File f = new file("test.txt").
I don't know why this happens. Is there a way to create the file in the WebContent directory as I want to make that file available for download in my JSP.
Java has a concept of the "current directory". When you start an application via Eclipse, this may indeed point to your installation directory. If you don't specify any path, a file will be created in this current directory. Hence the reason why your test.txt ends up there.
The WebContent directory is a something that is specific to Eclipse. Your code should not depend on putting anything there. You only start your application via Eclipse when you're developing it, not when you're deploying it to a live server.
The content of this directory will become the root of your .war, which is a well known location independent of how you start & deploy you app, BUT you still cannot depend on writing anything to this location at run-time. You might deploy your application as a packaged .war (likely for live deployments) or you may deploy your application unpackaged but then your application server may simply not pick up any changes done at run-time.
What you can do if you are sure your application only runs on a single server is writing the files to a well known location on your file system, such as /tmp, or /var/yourapp/files, etc. The code serving up those files can then pick them up from that location.
If you want to play it 100% safe according to the Java EE rules, you'd store your files on something like an FTP server that has a configurable address. Technically your war could be shipped between nodes on a cluster and requests could end up going to different machines, so depending on a local filesystem wouldn't work then.
Executing this statement this.getServletContext().getRealPath (""), you'll obtain the path where Tomcat WebServer is pointing at at runtime. You could add a folder "MyFolder" and call this statement:
new File(this.getServletContext().getRealPath ("") + "/MyFolder/test.txt");
Anyway, the default path looks something like:
...\workspace\.metadata\.plugins\org.eclipse.wst.server.core\tmp0\wtpwebapps\<NameOfYourProject>
Note that when you create a new file, it won't appear in your immediate workspace (check the .metadata path), unless you change the runtime location tomcat should point at.
I actually can't believe I'm saying this but since porting my programs to OSX and getting used to permissions, I've realized that what I planned to do on Windows will not work how I want it to. Currently, on windows, my program stores it's setting's in the registry (HKLM) and some user editable resources in a folder next to the program file. For various reasons, I have now decided that the configuration/settings will be stored in a file and the user will be able to in which folder the other resources are kept.
So the question I have now is where to store the configuration file. Obviously it will be updated, but I don't want to program to have to require administrator permissions to run. I would like to offer an option so that all users can use the program (like most programs do), which will of course require Admin, so this leads be onto the second query: where should I store the configuration file (and the folder in which other resources are kept) and how can I detect whether the program has been installed for all users or just one!
Thanks in advance
PS If you didn't guess, the program is written in Java so I would like to know how to programatically get the location you suggest as well please.
Its normal practice in *nix compatible programs to store information in folders starting with name . in the home directory of the users like,
.bash_history
.bashrc
You could use the same on OSX in my opinion and create a directory say,
.myapp
You can store any number of files with any format under that directory.
To get the location of the folder, you can do
String homeDir = System.getProperty("user.home");
File myAppDir = new File(homeDir, ".myapp");
That is roughly the code that can get you your custom config directory for your app.
Please not that dot files / folders are somewhat similar to hidden folders in windows. Your File Manager will not generally show these files / folders by default.
To identify if the program is installed for all the users or not, you could create the configuration at some administrator (root) controlled location like /etc (not sure about Mac) The user configuration can always override the default config. There could be a better way to handle this though.
On both windows and unix, User(usually) has a (home)folder to which it has full permissions. You may create a directory in the home folder and have your user configuration files reside there.
We have a Windows Java desktop application that creates some configuration files at %APPDATA% and creates logs at %TEMP% location. Now we are planning to release that desktop application for Mac OS X. We are facing following difficulties:
We do not want to keep application data within .app (file extension app) so please suggest where else we can keep our configuration files.
We do not want to keep temporary files at %TEMP% location in Mac OS X because Mac OS X automatically cleans the %TEMP% location as per schedule.
So we do not want data lose from temp and do not want to keep data with in .app. Please suggest.
Thanks
You should probably put the files under /Library/Application Support/<your app> or ~/Library/Application Support/<your app>
If the resources apply to all users
on the system, such as document
templates, place them in
/Library/Application Support. If the
resources are user-specific, such as
workspace configuration files, place
them in the current user’s
~/Library/Application Support
directory.
Source: Determining Where to Store Your App-Specific Files
We do not want to keep application data within .app (file extension app) so please suggest where else we can keep our configuration files.
Use Preference API
We do not want to keep temporary files at %TEMP% location in MAC OS because MAC OS automatically clean %TEMP% location as per schedule.
Create a dir under user.home to keep temp data
Either ~/Library/Application Support or ~/Library/Caches come to mind. Use the APIs if possible.