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As i know it returns the application path? But what exactly the use of it.
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Interface ServletContext. Defines a set of methods that a servlet uses to communicate with its servlet container, for example, to get the MIME type of a file, dispatch requests, or write to a log file. There is one context per "web application" per Java Virtual Machine.
The context initialization parameters are common and accessible to all the servlets in an application and hence are also called the application parameters. The context initialization parameters are set in the deployment descriptor file, web.xml.
There is only one ServletContext object per web application.
In many environments the application user is not allowed to read any files outside of the deployment directory. This is mostly done for security purposes - for example if someone hacks your application they won't be able to read a passwords file.
And in professionally managed environments developers often don't have a say in which directory the application will be placed.
So if you need to read a file like properties, images, certificates, etc. you can place it in the application directory (or .war file) and use getRealPath("") to get the path you need to load.
As an alternative you can place the external files on the classpath but there are sometimes issues with this. For large files most app servers will try to load the entire file into memory and cache it if it is on the classpath.
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