File only accessible when placed in a location where it will be erased from the jar

Question

I'm new to NetBeans IDE, and am struggling with accessing a file after building the jar file. After reading through many posts on this topic, I decided to try the following code:

BufferedReader read = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(getClass().getResourceAsStream("/file.txt")));

This works fine when my file is placed inside the "build" folder of the project where the .class files are, but of course this is a problem because it is erased in the "clean and build" process when the jar file is created. I have tried placing it in the src folder, in a separate "resources" package, and in the root of directory. I have also tried calling getResourceAsStream() with "file.txt" and "/src/file.txt," but it only works in the above configuration when the file is with the .class files. Any tips would be much appreciated!

Answer 1

Why not have your file folder inside the tomcat bin and refer the directory from your code. So maven clean will not alter the files and you can remove, update file without needing to restart the application. ( here i have file inside etc )

Path: /Users/username/Documents/apache-tomcat-8.5.15/bin/etc 

ArrayList<String> readList = null;
String workingDir = System.getProperty("user.dir");
String fileName = "File.txt";
File file = new File(workingDir+"/etc/" + fileName);
readList = resourceReader.readFile(file.getAbsolutePath());

I have method readFile to parse some data and build the ArrayList in the above example.

Read about System Properties

Answer 2

Turns out the solution was really simple...I had been trying to manually create a resources folder, but the contents kept being deleted upon building of the jar. Instead, I created a resources package and put the file into the auto-generated folder inside the src folder, which packaged the file into the jar. Thanks everyone!