How to Get a Path to a Resource in a Java Jar File

How to get a path to a resource in a Java JAR file

This is deliberate. The contents of the "file" may not be available as a file. Remember you are dealing with classes and resources that may be part of a JAR file or other kind of resource. The classloader does not have to provide a file handle to the resource, for example the jar file may not have been expanded into individual files in the file system.

Anything you can do by getting a java.io.File could be done by copying the stream out into a temporary file and doing the same, if a java.io.File is absolutely necessary.

How to get a path to a resource/file out of a Java JAR file

If the file is in the same directory as the jar, I think this will work (feels fairly hacky, but...):

URL url = getClass().getProtectionDomain().getCodeSource().getLocation();
File myfile = new File(url.toURI());
File dir = myfile.getParentFile(); // strip off .jar file

(Haven't tested this, but it seems feasible. Will only work with file-based jars of course).

If the file is in some random location, I think you will need to either pass in parameters or check "known" locations like user.home. (Or, you could always put the file in the jar a use getResource().)

Getting a resource's path

i have been searching for a way to get a file object from a file in the resources folder.

This is flat out impossible. The resources folder is going to end up jarred into your distribution, and you can't edit jar files, they are read only (or at least, you should consider them so. Non-idiotic deployments will generally mark their own code files (which includes those jars) as read-only to the running process. Even if not, editing jar files is extremely heavy and not something you want to do. Even if you do, on windows, open files can't be edited/replaced like this without significant headaches).

The 'resources' folder simply isn't designed for files that are meant to be modified.

The usual strategy is to make a directory someplace (for example, the user's home dir, accessing via System.getProperty("user.home"), and then make/edit files within that dir. If you wish, you can put templates in your resources folder and use those to 'initialize' that dir hanging off the user's home dir with a skeleton version.

If you have a few ten thousand files to make, whatever process needs this needs to be adjusted to not need this. For example, by using a database (H2, perhaps, if you want to ship it with your java app and have it be as low impact as possible).

How to get the path of a running JAR file?

return new File(MyClass.class.getProtectionDomain().getCodeSource().getLocation()
    .toURI()).getPath();

Replace "MyClass" with the name of your class.

Obviously, this will do odd things if your class was loaded from a non-file location.

How to get .jar resources path?

You're jumping through way too many hoops. It's quite simple:

FileUtils.class.getResource("path.png");
// -OR-

try (var in = FileUtils.class.getResourceAsStream("path.png")) {
    // in is an inputstream.
}

is all you need. Note that this means the path.png file is searched for in the exact same place (and even same 'subdir') as where FileUtils lives. So if you have, say, a file on C:\Projects\Hugo\MyApp\myapp.jar, and if you were to unzip that, inside you'd find com/foo/pkg/FileUtils.class, then the string path.png would look in that jar, and for com/foo/pkg/path.png. In other words, AnyClass.class.getResource("AnyClass.class") will let a class find its own class file. If you want to go from the 'root' of the jar, add a slash, i.e. FileUtils.class.getResource("/path.png") looks in the same jar, and for /path.png inside that jar.

getResource returns a URL. getResourceAsStream returns a stream (which you need to close; use try-with-resources as I did). Just about every resource-using API out there will take one of these two as input. For example, ImageIO does so; it even takes a URL so you can use either one:

var image = ImageIO.read(FileUtils.class.getResource("imgName + ".png"));

Yes. It's a one-liner. This will load images straight from within a jar file!

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