Getting a List of files from a class path entry

Question

I am facing a problem in my application that I cannot list all the resource from a class path entry.

Enumeration<URL> resources = Thread.currentThread().getContextClassLoader().getResources("src/main/resources/*.*");
System.out.println(resources);
while (resources.hasMoreElements()) {
  URL url = resources.nextElement();
  //Here I am getting an empty URL list.Please help.
  System.out.println(url);
}

Answer 1

The are couple of problems:

1. src/main/resources/*.* is not valid syntax for ClassLoader.getResources()
   • the path must be full path, e.g. src/main/resources
2. Why are you trying to load classes from src/main/resources directory?
   • it assumes that the resources are in such directory, but that would work only for development purposes
   • after the compilation the resources will be stored in a different directory (Maven will put it top level directory by default) and your program will not work correctly

Answer 2

I think such resources that are read should be put inside folder 'META-INF':

src/main/java/META-INF

Then you can read like following (better specify your file types more specifically than I do):

ClassLoader cl = this.getClass().getClassLoader(); Enumeration<URL> resources = cl.getResources("META-INF"); while (resources.hasMoreElements()) { URL url = resources.nextElement(); System.out.println(url); }