How do I get real path as string in Grails

Question

Developed project using grails-3.3.1 and generated a Runnable WAR file. When I run using the command:

java -jar build/libs/myproject-0.1.war

It is returning null for the following line:

serveltContext.getRealPath("/someSource");

But it is working fine when deployed in a Tomcat Container.

Then tried the following way:

servletContext.getResource("someSource").getPath();

It is returning, but not the one as expected and not what getRealPath() returns. It is returning like this:

D:/myprojects/myproject/build/libs/myproject-01.war*/

which serves no use for me. Found answers suggesting to use getResourceAsStream() but I don't want a resource, I want only String.

Also, what are you trying to achieve by just getting the `String` path instead of the complete file/resource? — Shashank Agrawal, Nov 15 '19 at 07:58
I need to pass that string as a parameter to another resource, which creates a sub-report — Abdul, Nov 26 '19 at 10:35

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Nov 15 '19 at 16:29

I was unable to find a solution that worked both locally and when deployed in a container. I ended up using this workaround instead to get the path depending on which environment the code is running in:

def path
if (Environment.current == Environment.DEVELOPMENT) {
    path = java.nio.file.FileSystems.default.getPath("someSource").toAbsolutePath().toString()
} else {
    path = ServletContextHolder.servletContext.getRealPath("/someSource")
}

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Feb 06 '22 at 13:06

I had the same issue with Grails 4.0.11. Seems like serveltContext.getRealPath is deprecated and returns null. Your solution didn't work either for me, so I decided to go with the following approach: (found on https://howtodoinjava.com/spring-boot2/read-file-from-resources/)

  import org.springframework.core.io.ClassPathResource
  import org.springframework.core.io.Resource

  Resource resource = new ClassPathResource("pdfResources/fonts/SFUIText-Medium.ttf") 
  String path = resource?.getPath()

Given the fact, that my app is called "filetest", the file is located on filetest/src/main/resources/pdfResources/fonts/SFUIText-Medium.ttf

This works with "grails run-app" and "grails war" as embedded runnable war file. Hope it helps, as it took me quite a while.

How do I get real path as string in Grails

2 Answers2