Accessing .properties from a servlet

[Manish Malik]

Hi,

How does a web container (like tomcat) handle .properties files for access by servlets?

For example, if a servlet needs to access some stored key-value pairs from a .properties file, where should this file be placed?

For example,

FileInputStream myPropertiesFile = new FileInputStream("myconfig");
Properties myProperties = new Properties();
myProperties.load(myPropertiesFile);
// access properties from the object here...
myPropertiesFile.close();


Where should this file be placed (for example, in case of tomcat) for the servlet to be able to read it?

Does the location change, if the class that needs to access the properties file is a web service? (Axis under tomcat)


Thanks.

[Tim Baker]

Servlets can accesss properties files in the same way as java apps, the only thing you need to cater for is the new path.

Personally I put my properties file inside WEB-INF/conf . This is a snippet of code I use:

 
      java.util.Properties properties = System.getProperties();
      properties.load(new java.io.FileInputStream(getServletContext().getRealPath("WEB-INF/conf/blah.conf")));
 

[Bear Bibeault]

Or, if you don't want to deal with file paths at all, simply put them in the classpath under WEB-INF/classes and load them by class designation as in "normal" Java apps.

[Ben Souther]

This was just discussed a few days ago.
You might find this thread interesting:
http://www.coderanch.com/t/360641/Servlets/java/keep-configFile-webapp