Spring Boot access static resources missing scr/main/resources

Question

I am working on a Spring Boot application. I need to parse an XML file (countries.xml) on start. The problem is that I do not understand where to put it so that I could access it. My folders structure is

ProjectDirectory/src/main/java
ProjectDirectory/src/main/resources/countries.xml

My first idea was to put it in src/main/resources, but when I try to create File (countries.xml) I get a NPE and the stacktrace shows that my file is looked in the ProjectDirectory (so src/main/resources/ is not added). I tried to create File (resources/countries.xml) and the path would look like ProjectDirectory/resources/countries.xml (so again src/main is not added).

I tried adding this with no result

@Override
public void addResourceHandlers(final ResourceHandlerRegistry registry) {
    registry.addResourceHandler("/resources/**").addResourceLocations("/resources/");
    registry.setOrder(Ordered.HIGHEST_PRECEDENCE);
    super.addResourceHandlers(registry);
}

I know that I can add src/main/ manually, but I want to understand why is it not working as it has to. I also tried examples with ResourceLoader - with the same no result.

Could anyone suggest what the problem is?

UPDATE: Just for future references - after building the project, I encountered problem with accessing file, so I changed File to InputStream

InputStream is = new ClassPathResource("countries.xml").getInputStream();

Answer 1

Just use Spring type ClassPathResource.

File file = new ClassPathResource("countries.xml").getFile();

As long as this file is somewhere on classpath Spring will find it. This can be src/main/resources during development and testing. In production, it can be current running directory.

EDIT: This approach doesn't work if file is in fat JAR. In such case you need to use:

InputStream is = new ClassPathResource("countries.xml").getInputStream();