Where to place and how to referance a folder with textfiles in Java project

Question

In my project i want to read data from several textfiles, therefore I have organized them into folders likte following:

1. textfiles
   • folder1
     • subfolder1
       • file.txt
     • subfolder2
   • folder2
     • subfolder3

My problem is that I don´t know where to put my folder or how to referance my textfiles. I have read Where to put a textfile I want to use in eclipse? and have a setup looking like this:
Folder location:
workspace/porjectX/src/textfiles
Code:

FileInputStream fis= new FileInputStream("/textfiles/folder1/subfolder1/file.txt"); 

The result i get is a "FileNotFoundException"...

I have checked spelling, everything is lowercase and with no spaces. Any thoughts?

Thanks for any help!

Answer 1

First you have to make sure the folder testfiles is on your build path (Project->Properties->Java Build Path). Then you can get the inputstream for the file the following way:

this.getClass().getClassLoader().getResourceAsStream("folder1/subfolder1/file.txt");

See also: getResourceAsStream() vs FileInputStream