Read common external property file in Java Webapp and java normal app

Question

I know this question has answered many a time with most useful answer as below,

Where to place and how to read configuration resource files in servlet based applicat

Answer 1

You can add a <context> to tomcat/conf/server.xml (in this example, linux path):

<Context docBase="/home/yourusername/tomcat/assests" path="/assets" />

If you are using Windows:

<Context docBase="C:\path\to\myapp\assets" path="/assets" />

And then you can access it like any other resource within your webapp (e.g.: /assets/myappConfig.property).

If you are using JDBC for example, you could store the connection properties in a Singleton and request it from there, and that class could take care of change checks on that file.