If i understand your problem, you need to read a file(XML/property or Text) from within a servlet/webapplication, but the file is out side the projects root folder.
Possible answers.
1,Read using File, give absolute path to the file(eg "C:\")
This solution will make your web app to be system dependent(since C:\ maynot be present in a linux server), which is against
java ideology of deploy/run anywhere!!.
2,Read using a file but find the relative path from inside the
Servlet Context, and load it relatively, so your application works on any deployment machine.
TADA