I have a project where I want to load a velocity template to complete it with parameters. The whole application is packaged as a jar file. What I initially thought of doing was this:
VelocityEngine ve = new VelocityEngine();
URL url = this.getClass().getResource("/templates/");
File file = new File(url.getFile());
ve = new VelocityEngine();
ve.setProperty(RuntimeConstants.RESOURCE_LOADER, "file");
ve.setProperty(RuntimeConstants.FILE_RESOURCE_LOADER_PATH, file.getAbsolutePath());
ve.setProperty(RuntimeConstants.FILE_RESOURCE_LOADER_CACHE, "true");
ve.init();
VelocityContext context = new VelocityContext();
if (properties != null) {
stringfyNulls(properties);
for (Map.Entry<String, Object> property : properties.entrySet()) {
context.put(property.getKey(), property.getValue());
}
}
final String templatePath = templateName + ".vm";
Template template = ve.getTemplate(templatePath, "UTF-8");
String outFileName = File.createTempFile("report", ".html").getAbsolutePath();
BufferedWriter writer = new BufferedWriter(new FileWriter(new File(outFileName)));
template.merge(context, writer);
writer.flush();
writer.close();
And this works fine when I run it in eclipse. However, once I package the program and try to run it using the command line I get an error because the file could not be found.
I imagine the problem is in this line:
ve.setProperty(RuntimeConstants.FILE_RESOURCE_LOADER_PATH, file.getAbsolutePath());
Because in a jar the absolute file does not exist, since it's inside a zip, but I couldn't yet find a better way to do it.
Anyone has any ideas?
If you want to use resources from classpath, you should use resource loader for classpath:
ve.setProperty(RuntimeConstants.RESOURCE_LOADER, "classpath");
ve.setProperty("classpath.resource.loader.class", ClasspathResourceLoader.class.getName());
Final code, developed using the ideas presented in both answers above:
VelocityEngine ve = new VelocityEngine();
ve.setProperty(RuntimeConstants.RESOURCE_LOADER, "classpath");
ve.setProperty("classpath.resource.loader.class", ClasspathResourceLoader.class.getName());
ve.init();
final String templatePath = "templates/" + templateName + ".vm";
InputStream input = this.getClass().getClassLoader().getResourceAsStream(templatePath);
if (input == null) {
throw new IOException("Template file doesn't exist");
}
InputStreamReader reader = new InputStreamReader(input);
VelocityContext context = new VelocityContext();
if (properties != null) {
stringfyNulls(properties);
for (Map.Entry<String, Object> property : properties.entrySet()) {
context.put(property.getKey(), property.getValue());
}
}
Template template = ve.getTemplate(templatePath, "UTF-8");
String outFileName = File.createTempFile("report", ".html").getAbsolutePath();
BufferedWriter writer = new BufferedWriter(new FileWriter(new File(outFileName)));
if (!ve.evaluate(context, writer, templatePath, reader)) {
throw new Exception("Failed to convert the template into html.");
}
template.merge(context, writer);
writer.flush();
writer.close();
Unless JAR is exploded, you can't read the resource in JAR as file. Use an input stream.
See following code snippets,
InputStream input = classLoader.getResourceAsStream(fileName);
if (input == null) {
throw new ConfigurationException("Template file " +
fileName + " doesn't exist");
}
InputStreamReader reader = new InputStreamReader(input);
Writer writer = null;
try {
writer = new OutputStreamWriter(output);
// Merge template
if (!engine.evaluate(context, writer, fileName, reader))
......
To make Velocity look for the templates in classpath:
VelocityEngine ve = new VelocityEngine();
ve.setProperty(RuntimeConstants.RESOURCE_LOADER, "classpath");
ve.setProperty("classpath.resource.loader.class",ClasspathResourceLoader.class.getName());
ve.init();