accessing an external file in the struts.xml

Question

Is it possible to access a file that is located in the local drive or server side folder from struts.xml? as follow:

C:/Folder/jasperReport.jasper

or

%{filename} 

where the filename is avariable in the action class with the file location is hardcoded as String filename = "C:/Folder/jasperReport.jasper";

My struts2 application is deployed on JBoss as 6, it seems ServletRequestAware is unable to access the folder within war file while working with JBoss. It is working fine with tomcat. I am thinking about accessing files in the server size instead.

Answer 1

Much of the answer depends on what your application server is. In any case, I don't think this is a good practice. IMO you should include the file with your webapp and find a way to access to it.

Comments

Thanks for responding to my question. However, JBoss server does not explode the war deployed to it. Unlike tomcat, it does explode the war file, and this is why it is easy to access files within a war file.

Here's is my code

private HttpServletRequest servletRequest;
@Override
    public void setServletRequest(HttpServletRequest httpServletRequest) {
        // TODO Auto-generated method stub
        this.servletRequest = httpServletRequest;
    }
String filePath = servletRequest.getSession().getServletContext().getRealPath("/MyApp/web/jasper/jasperReport.jasper");
However, I am getting the following path when debugging the above code:

C:jboss-6.0.0.Finalserverdefaulttmpvfsautomounta5bfada4df82fa0eMyApp.war-ec6d753dd0506906webjasperjasperReport.jasper.

The JasperReport.jar is located at the MyApp/web/jasper/ folder.

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You have at least one extra layer in your file path, normally you'd keep files like this under WEB-INF, and start the file path from there.

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I moved the file placed under /WEB-INF directory, but the action class still cannot located the path to the file.