Confused about java properties file location

Question

I have simple java project with structure:

package com.abc: a.java b.java c.properties

I have database configuration parameters conf

Answer 1

The typical way of handling this is to load the base properties from your embedded file, and allow users of the application to specify an additional file with overrides. Some pseudocode:

Properties p = new Properties();
InputStream in = this.getClass().getResourceAsStream("c.properties");
p.load(in);

String externalFileName = System.getProperty("app.properties");
InputStream fin = new FileInputStream(new File(externalFileName));
p.load(fin);

Your program would be invoked similar to this:

java -jar app.jar -Dapp.properties="/path/to/custom/app.properties"