How a JAR file can read an external properties file

Question

We have a connection pooling component (JAR file) for one of our application. As of now the application connection details are bundled with-in the JAR file (in .proper

Answer 1

Just load the properties from file, something like

Properties properties = new Properties();
InputStreamReader in = null;
try {
     in = new InputStreamReader(new FileInputStream("propertiesfilepathandname"), "UTF-8");
     properties.load(in);
} finally {
     if (null != in) {
         try {
             in.close();
         } catch (IOException ex) {}
     }
}

Note how the encoding is explicitly specified as UTF-8 above. It could also be left out if you accept the default ISO8859-1 encoding, but beware with any special characters then.