[SOLVED] Read external properties file from jar added to an unpacked WAR deployed under Tomcat

Read external properties file from jar added to an unpacked WAR deployed under Tomcat

I'm trying to access a simple .properties file from a JAR that is added to an unpacked .war file in Apache Tomcat. This is the approach I tried so far:

InputStream inputStream = this.getClass().getClassLoader().getResourceAsStream("../classes/testProps.properties");
Properties props = new Properties();
props.load(inputStream);
System.out.println(props.get("test"));

But this doesn't do the trick as I keep getting a null on the inputStream.

For context, I need to put the properties file under the WEB-INF/classes folder and the jar file in WEB-INF/lib.

Solution

This is how you are able to load and read external file properties:

import java.io.InputStream;
import java.util.Properties;

InputStream inputStream = getClass().getClassLoader().getResourceAsStream("/custom.properties");
Properties customProperties = new Properties();
try {
    customProperties.load(inputStream);
} catch (IOException e) {
    e.printStackTrace();
    logger.error("IOException caught while reading properties file: " + e.getMessage());
}

if( customProperties.get("prop1") != null )
    boolean prop1 = Boolean.parseBoolean((String) customProperties.get("prop1"));