How to read file from JAR file (classpath)

But how to read a file from classpath? Open it with getResourceAsStream method and if you want to read text file, use InputStreamReader for conversion to Reader.

This way you can read a file from your harddrive in Java. But how to read a file from classpath? Which means from current JAR or WAR or any other JAR this application uses. You must open your file using:

InputStreamReader inputReader 
        = new InputStreamReader(Main.class.getClass()
             .getResourceAsStream("/log4j.properties"));

If your file is inside some package, use slash do delimit packages. This method returns InputStream. If you want to open a text file, convert it to reader using InputStreamReader.