How to pack resources in a Maven Project?

Question

I am looking for suggestion in putting image file maven web project. One of classes under src/main/java need to use an image file. My problem is, if i put image file under s

Answer 1

You can use maven-resources-plugin to copy things to desired location.

something like this

<plugin>
      <artifactId>maven-resources-plugin</artifactId>
      <version>2.5</version>
      <executions>
        <execution>
          <id>copy-resources</id>
            <!-- here the phase you need -->
            <phase>validate</phase>
            <goals>
              <goal>copy-resources</goal>
            </goals>
            <configuration>
              <outputDirectory><!--your path here--></outputDirectory>
                <resources>          
                  <resource>
                    <directory><!--path-here--></directory>
                   </resource>
              </resources>              
            </configuration>      
          </execution>
        </executions>
      </plugin>

EDIT: based on your comment below, i think what you need is a properties file where you maintain path to the resources folder. That path will be an absolute path. Depending on your deployment you change that path in the properties file.

Answer 2

The default resource directory for all Maven projects is src/main/resources which will end up in target/classes and in WEB-INF/classes in the WAR. The directory structure will be preserved in the process.

.
 |-- pom.xml
 `-- src
     `-- main
         |-- java
         |   `-- com
         |       `-- example
         |           `-- projects
         |               `-- SampleAction.java
         |-- resources
         |   `-- images
         |       `-- sampleimage.jpg
         `-- webapp
             |-- WEB-INF
             |   `-- web.xml
             |-- index.jsp
             `-- jsp
                 `-- websource.jsp

The suggested way to put your resources is in the src/main/resources

Reference: Adding and Filtering External Web Resources

Answer 3

It seems that your problem is the way you read the image. You can't (or shouldn't) read the image from a Path. The Path might change on every system.

You need to read the image from the classpath like:

MyClass.class.getResource("/images/image.jpg")

or

MyClass.class.getResourceAsStream("/images/image.jpg")

For this to work, the image Folder needs to be on the classpath. Maven will put everything in the classpath, that is under main/resources. So thats where your image folder should be.