File inside jar is not visible for spring

Question

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I created a jar file with the following MANIFEST.MF inside:

Manifest-Version: 1.0
Ant-Version: Apache Ant 1.8.3
Created-By: 1.6.0_25-b06 (Sun Microsystems Inc.)
Main-Class: my.Main
Class-Path: . lib/spring-core-3.2.0.M2.jar lib/spring-beans-3.2.0.M2.jar

In its root there is a file called my.config which is referenced in my spring-context.xml like this:

<bean id="..." class="...">
    <property name="resource" value="classpath:my.config" />
</bean>

If I run the jar, everything looks fine escept the loading of that specific file:

Caused by: java.io.FileNotFoundException: class path resource [my.config] cannot be resolved to absolute file path because it does not reside in the file system: jar:file:/D:/work/my.jar!/my.config
        at org.springframework.util.ResourceUtils.getFile(ResourceUtils.java:205)
    at org.springframework.core.io.AbstractFileResolvingResource.getFile(AbstractFileResolvingResource.java:52)
    at eu.stepman.server.configuration.BeanConfigurationFactoryBean.getObject(BeanConfigurationFactoryBean.java:32)
    at eu.stepman.server.configuration.BeanConfigurationFactoryBean.getObject(BeanConfigurationFactoryBean.java:1)
    at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.FactoryBeanRegistrySupport.doGetObjectFromFactoryBean(FactoryBeanRegistrySupport.java:142)
    ... 22 more

• classes are loaded the from inside the jar
• spring and other dependencies are loaded from separated jars
• spring context is loaded (new ClassPathXmlApplicationContext("spring-context/applicationContext.xml"))
• my.properties is loaded into PropertyPlaceholderConfigurer ("classpath:my.properties")
• if I put my .config file outside the file system, and change the resource url to 'file:', everything seems to be fine...

Any tips?

Answer 1

If your spring-context.xml and my.config files are in different jars then you will need to use classpath*:my.config?

More info here

Also, make sure you are using resource.getInputStream() not resource.getFile() when loading from inside a jar file.

Answer 2

I know this question has already been answered. However, for those using spring boot, this link helped me - https://smarterco.de/java-load-file-classpath-spring-boot/

However, the resourceLoader.getResource("classpath:file.txt").getFile(); was causing this problem and sbk's comment:

That's it. A java.io.File represents a file on the file system, in a directory structure. The Jar is a java.io.File. But anything within that file is beyond the reach of java.io.File. As far as java is concerned, until it is uncompressed, a class in jar file is no different than a word in a word document.

helped me understand why to use getInputStream() instead. It works for me now!

Thanks!

Answer 3

In the spring jar package, I use new ClassPathResource(filename).getFile(), which throws theexception:

cannot be resolved to absolute file path because it does not reside in the file system: jar

But using new ClassPathResource(filename).getInputStream() will solve this problem. The reason is that the configuration file in the jar does not exist in the operating system's file tree,so must use getInputStream().

Answer 4

I had similar problem when using Tomcat6.x and none of the advices I found was helping. At the end I deleted work folder (of Tomcat) and the problem gone.

I know it is illogical but for documentation purpose...