Image path problem

[Chetan Parekh]

We have an application in JSP + Tomcat. We have another desktop application on the same PC. We have common images that has used in both applications, hence we made a common folder c:\images and put all images there.

Desktop application is already using images from that folder, and in web application, we have written

<IMG SRC="c:\images\flag.gif">

This is working fine if we have Windows OS on the server.

But we deploy application in Linux, and give execute following code

<IMG SRC="var/images/flag.gif">

It gives error.

It looks for var/images/ folder in tomcat_home/webapps folder.

[Satish SN]

Hi Chetan,

I feel in windows case you are giving the absolute path stating the drive and the folder structure

in linux scenario i feel u need to put a slash before the var folder other wise the linux will treat the same as relative path from the tomcat.

i think the best practice i would suggest for mentioning the images should be from the web application context path so that there is no need to modify every time for the image paths

[Sravan Kumar]

Your images are a part of your web-app, so put them under the context root, say, in a folder called images.

You can refer to them in your servlets or JSP as "/images/pic1.gif". Do not refer to the images as physical files as it will be inconvenient to deploy your webapp in some other server at a later date.

The bottomline: Treat images are web-app resources, not files.

[Chetan Parekh]

Originally posted by Sravan Kumar:
Your images are a part of your web-app, so put them under the context root, say, in a folder called images.

You can refer to them in your servlets or JSP as "/images/pic1.gif". Do not refer to the images as physical files as it will be inconvenient to deploy your webapp in some other server at a later date.

The bottomline: Treat images are web-app resources, not files.

My problem is that they are not part of my context.

[Ben Souther]

How much space are you saving by not duplicating the images and keeping a copy in the webapp?

If maintenance is the issue, create a build script using Ant or Maven and have it gather the images for you when you package the app.

[Chetan Parekh]

Originally posted by Ben Souther:
How much space are you saving by not duplicating the images and keeping a copy in the webapp?

If maintenance is the issue, create a build script using Ant or Maven and have it gather the images for you when you package the app.

Well I have already suggested this solution, but my PM is not agree to this.

[Sravan Kumar]

Well, now I think that's more of a management issue than technical.

Chetan, you can probably send him a link to this forum.

Are you telling us your PM wants to refer to images as physical files?