This code helps you to get the physical path where your web application is deployed on the server. It may be useful, so you can for instance read or write files on the server. Please be aware that this method will only work when your web application is deployed in an exploded way, if it was deployed in a war format the getRealPath() method just return null.
package org.kodejava.servlet;
import javax.servlet.ServletException;
import javax.servlet.annotation.WebServlet;
import javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet;
import javax.servlet.http.HttpServletRequest;
import javax.servlet.http.HttpServletResponse;
import java.io.IOException;
import java.io.PrintWriter;
@WebServlet(name = "RealPathServlet", urlPatterns = "/real-path")
public class GetWebApplicationPathServlet extends HttpServlet {
@Override
protected void doGet(HttpServletRequest request, HttpServletResponse response)
throws ServletException, IOException {
String path = getServletContext().getRealPath("/");
PrintWriter writer = response.getWriter();
writer.println("Application path: " + path);
}
}
If you tried access the servlet you’ll get an output like:
Application path: F:\Wayan\Kodejava\kodejava-example\kodejava-servlet\target\kodejava-servlet\
Maven dependencies
<dependency>
<groupId>javax.servlet</groupId>
<artifactId>javax.servlet-api</artifactId>
<version>4.0.1</version>
</dependency>
Founder at Kode Java Org
A programmer, recreational runner, live in the island of Bali, Indonesia. Programming in Java, Spring, Hibernate / JPA. You can support me working on this project, buy me a cup of coffee ☕ every little bit helps, thank you 🙏
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I am using embedded tomcat for my project. When I do servletContext.getRealPath(“/WEB-INF/downloads/template.xlsx”) I get a null. But when I do servletContext.getResource(“/WEB-INF/downloads/template.xlsx”).getPath() it returns the path through the war file ie I://projects/myproject/target/application.war/WEB-INF/downloads/template.xlsx. Is there a workaround to get the actual path?
PS: I read that when using embedded tomcat the war file doesn’t get expanded.
Hi Azm,
servletContext.getRealPath()does not work when the war file is unexploded. If you want to read thetemplate.xlxsfile you can useservletContext.getResourceAsStream(path)which return you anInputStreamof the resource / file.I was trying to download a template from my application. This is all a part of converting an old style spring application into spring boot.
When I was using external tomcat I used to do
getRealPathand then convert it into aFileInputStreamby creating a newFileobject out of the path. I used your suggestion to directly get the input stream by usinggetResourceAsStream. And it worked.Thanks for your help.