Create a file and store in Java web application folder

Question

I would like to create an xml file and store in a folder within my spring Mvc web application.

I can get the root of my application with request.getContextPath

Answer 1

One solution is to bundle the XML with the clases in the JAR/WAR and then use the getResourceAsStream() to leverage the ClassLoader to locate the file.

If I put the file foo.xml with the classes in com/stackoverflow/example, I could then locate the resources from objects in that bundle with

InputStream is = MyClass.getResourceAsStream( "com/stackoverflow/example" );

and from here process the file with a XML parser or whatever else you wanted to do to read the file.