Accessing Files in War/WEB-INF Folder in App Engine

Reading files within the war/WEB-INF folder in an App Engine project involves constructing a suitable path to the resource. To do this, you have two options:

Option 1: ServletContext's getRealPath() Method

This approach works if the WAR file is expanded (a set of files instead of a single .war file).

ServletContext context = getContext();
String fullPath = context.getRealPath("/WEB-INF/test/foo.txt");

Option 2: ServletContext's getResource Method

This approach always works, regardless of whether the WAR file is expanded or not.

ServletContext context = getContext();
URL resourceUrl = context.getResource("/WEB-INF/test/foo.txt");

Alternatively, to obtain the input stream directly:

InputStream resourceContent = context.getResourceAsStream("/WEB-INF/test/foo.txt");

You can obtain the ServletContext from a JSP page via the context field or from a servlet via the ServletConfig that is passed into the servlet's init() method.