NullPointerException when reading a properties file in Java

Question

I am using the following code to read a properties file:

Properties pro = new Properties();
InputStream is = Thread.currentThread().getContextClassLoader().         


        

Answer 1

I had the same problem and was quite confused as I used it previously in a Sturts application. But the problem was that I didn't understand the type of ClassLoader that Struts returns is different than what Spring returns. And the way i figured it out was i printed out the object that was returned on to the system console like this:

System.out.println(Thread.currentThread().getContextClassLoader());

[
WebappClassLoader
context: /MyProject
delegate: false
repositories:
/WEB-INF/classes/
----------> Parent Classloader:
org.apache.catalina.loader.StandardClassLoader@1004901
]

It gave me the detail of the object, and in that I found its type to be of WebAppClassLoader which will start looking for files in the WEB-INF/classes/ folder after a build is done. So I went into the that folder and looked for where my file is located so I gave the path accordingly.

In my case it was located in /WEB-INF/classes/META-INF/spring/filename.extension

InputStream in = Thread.currentThread().getContextClassLoader().getResourceAsStream("META-INF/spring/filename.extension");

Voilà!

That fixed it all.