What is the difference between Class.getResource() and ClassLoader.getResource()?

Question

I wonder what the difference is between Class.getResource() and ClassLoader.getResource()?

edit: I especially want to know if any cachi

Answer 1

To answer the question whether there is any caching going on.

I investigated this point further by running a stand-alone Java application that continuously loaded a file from disk using the getResourceAsStream ClassLoader method. I was able to edit the file, and the changes were reflected immediately, i.e., the file was reloaded from disk without caching.

However: I'm working on a project with several maven modules and web projects that have dependencies on each other. I'm using IntelliJ as my IDE to compile and run the web projects.

I noticed that the above seemed to no longer hold true, the reason being that the file that I was being loaded is now baked into a jar and deployed to the depending web project. I only noticed this after trying to change the file in my target folder, to no avail. This made it seem as though there was caching going on.