ServletContext on Google App Engine where is the "context" in the classpath?

Question

I want to deploy a few Freemarker templates with my Google App Engine java application to use as email body templates. I'm using freemarker-gae-2.3.23.jar.

My question is where within the war file should I place my template files so that the Freemarker Configuration class can find them? I thought WEB-INF/classes/templates would work but I'm getting the following error when I run it on a GAE instance. getRealPath() does not give any insight either. Empty string is returned. Any thoughts or suggestions much appreciated.

SEVERE: Template ./templates/invitation.ftl not found.
java.lang.RuntimeException: Error in loading ftl template: Template ./templates/invitation.ftl not found.

My basic config is as follows:

public class FreeMarkerConfig {

private static FreeMarkerConfig freeMarkerConfig = null;
private static Configuration cfg = null;
private static final Logger logger =   Logger.getLogger(FreeMarkerConfig.class.getName());

private FreeMarkerConfig(ServletContext context){
    cfg = new Configuration();
    cfg.setServletContextForTemplateLoading(context, "/templates");
}

public static FreeMarkerConfig getInstance(ServletContext context){
    if(freeMarkerConfig == null){

        freeMarkerConfig = new FreeMarkerConfig(context);
        return freeMarkerConfig;
    }
    return freeMarkerConfig;
}

public static Template getTemplateByName(String fileName){
    try {
        return cfg.getTemplate(fileName);
    } catch(IOException e) {
        logger.severe(e.getMessage());
        e.getStackTrace();
        throw new RuntimeException("Error in loading ftl template: "+e.getMessage());
    }
}
}l

Answer 1

The solution was two fold. The context location is the "web" directory. So setting the freemarker config with this, fixed the problem.

    private FreeMarkerConfig(ServletContext context){
    cfg = new Configuration();
    cfg.setServletContextForTemplateLoading(context, "/WEB-INF/classes/templates/");
    }

As a second helpful tip I found I had to request the template with just the name of the template and not the filename. i.e. invitation and not invitation.ftl