java - Where to put a text file in Grails, and how to get the path

Question

I need to read in a .txt file into a groovy class in order to interrogate it line by line. But I am not sure what folder I put it into in my grails app, and how to get the path to it?

So far I have tried placing it under src and also in a new folder web-app/txt

and I have tried the the following to read it in

fileIn = new File('/lexicon.txt').text 

and

fileIn = new File('txt/lexicon.txt').text

to no avail.

Any body have any pointers?

Answer 1

Grails is a Java Web Application, so it will be compiled into a sigle file .war, with all files/classes/etc inside. Most Web containers do unpack war, but there are no any guaranteee, so it's not a good idea to use File to access this file as a file.

Btw, you can place your file into grails-app/conf, at this case it will be placed into classpath, and you'll be able to access it by using:

InputStream lexicon = this.class.classLoader.getResourceAsStream('lexicon.txt')

You could also put this file into a subdirectory, like grails-app/conf/data and load it as ***.getResourceAsStream('data/lexicon.txt')