Setting Jetty resourcebase to static file embedded in the same jar file - jar

Question

I am trying to access static resource (eg. first.html) packed inside the same .jar file (testJetty.jar), which also has a class which starts the jetty (v.8) server (MainTest.java). I am unable to set the resource base correctly.
The structure of my jar file (testJetty.jar):
testJetty.jar
first.html
MainTest.java
==
Works fine on local machine, but when I wrap it in jar file and then run it, it doesn't work, giving "404: File not found" error.
I tried to set the resourcebase with the following values, all of which failed:
a) Tried setting it to .
resource_handler.setResourceBase("."); // Results in directory containing the jar file, D:\Work\eclipseworkspace\testJettyResult
b) Tried getting it from getResource
ClassLoader loader = this.getClass().getClassLoader();
File indexLoc = new File(loader.getResource("first.html").getFile());
String htmlLoc = indexLoc.getAbsolutePath();
resource_handler.setResourceBase(htmloc); // Results in D:\Work\eclipseworkspace\testJettyResult\file:\D:\Work\eclipseworkspace\testJettyResult\testJetty1.jar!\first.html
c) Tried getting the webdir
String webDir = this.getClass().getProtectionDomain()
.getCodeSource().getLocation().toExternalForm();
resource_handler.setResourceBase(webdir); // Results in D:/Work/eclipseworkspace/testJettyResult/testJetty1.jar
None of these 3 approaches worked.
Any help or alternative would be appreciated
Thanks
abbas

Answer 1

The solutions provided in this thread work but I think some clarity to the solution could be useful.
If you are building a fat jar and use the ProtectionDomain way you may hit some issues because you are loading the whole jar!
class.getProtectionDomain().getCodeSource().getLocation().toExternalForm();
So the better solution is the other provided solution
contextHandler.setResourceBase(
YourClass.class
.getClassLoader()
.getResource("WEB-INF")
.toExternalForm());
The problem here is if you are building a fat jar you are not really dumping your webapp resources into WEB-INF but are probably going into the root of the jar, so a simple workaround is to create a folder XXX and use the second approach as follows:
contextHandler.setResourceBase(
YourClass.class
.getClassLoader()
.getResource("XXX")
.toExternalForm());
Or change your build tool to export the webapp files into that given directory. Maybe Maven does this on a Jar for you but gradle does not.

Answer 2

Not unusually, I found a solution to my problem. The 3rd approach mentioned by Stephen in Embedded Jetty : how to use a .war that is included in the .jar from which Jetty starts? worked!
So, I changed from Resource_handler to WebAppContext, where WebAppContext is pointing to the same jar (testJetty.jar) and it worked!
String webDir = MainTest.class.getProtectionDomain()
.getCodeSource().getLocation().toExternalForm(); ; // Results in D:/Work/eclipseworkspace/testJettyResult/testJetty.jar
WebAppContext webappContext = new WebAppContext(webDir, "/");

Answer 3

It looks like ClassLoader.getResource does not understand an empty string or . or / as an argument. In my jar file I had to move all stuf to WEB-INF(any other wrapping dir will do). So the code looks like
contextHandler.setResourceBase(EmbeddedJetty.class.getClassLoader().getResource("WEB-INF").toExternalForm());
so the context looks like this then:
ContextHandler:744 - Started o.e.j.w.WebAppContext#48b3806{/,jar:file:/Users/xxx/projects/dropbox/ui/target/ui-1.0-SNAPSHOT.jar!/WEB-INF,AVAILABLE}