Setting Jetty resourcebase to static file embedded in the same jar file

Question

I am trying to access static resource (eg. first.html) packed inside the same .jar file (testJetty.jar), which also has a class which starts the jetty (v.8) server (MainTest.java). I am unable to set the resource base correctly.

The structure of my jar file (testJetty.jar): testJetty.jar

• first.html

• MainTest.java

== Works fine on local machine, but when I wrap it in jar file and then run it, it doesn't work, giving "404: File not found" error.

I tried to set the resourcebase with the following values, all of which failed:

a) Tried setting it to .

resource_handler.setResourceBase("."); // Results in directory containing the jar file, D:\Work\eclipseworkspace\testJettyResult

b) Tried getting it from getResource

ClassLoader loader = this.getClass().getClassLoader();
File indexLoc = new File(loader.getResource("first.html").getFile());
String htmlLoc = indexLoc.getAbsolutePath();
resource_handler.setResourceBase(htmloc); // Results in D:\Work\eclipseworkspace\testJettyResult\file:\D:\Work\eclipseworkspace\testJettyResult\testJetty1.jar!\first.html

c) Tried getting the webdir

String webDir = this.getClass().getProtectionDomain()
        .getCodeSource().getLocation().toExternalForm();
resource_handler.setResourceBase(webdir); // Results in D:/Work/eclipseworkspace/testJettyResult/testJetty1.jar

None of these 3 approaches worked.

Any help or alternative would be appreciated

Thanks abbas

Answer 1

The solutions provided in this thread work but I think some clarity to the solution could be useful.

If you are building a fat jar and use the ProtectionDomain way you may hit some issues because you are loading the whole jar!

class.getProtectionDomain().getCodeSource().getLocation().toExternalForm();

So the better solution is the other provided solution

contextHandler.setResourceBase(
  YourClass.class
    .getClassLoader()
    .getResource("WEB-INF")
    .toExternalForm());

The problem here is if you are building a fat jar you are not really dumping your webapp resources into WEB-INF but are probably going into the root of the jar, so a simple workaround is to create a folder XXX and use the second approach as follows:

contextHandler.setResourceBase(
  YourClass.class
    .getClassLoader()
    .getResource("XXX")
    .toExternalForm());

Or change your build tool to export the webapp files into that given directory. Maybe Maven does this on a Jar for you but gradle does not.