ResourceBundle file not found, properties file not in jar

Question

About the resourcebundle errors, I've read other questions about the same subject, but I didn't get any wiser. Tried different things, doesn't help. To give a little background: I developed a small app (JDK6), that does some flat file parsing and editing automatically. The app starts by reading some data from a properties file.

Important: I want to be able to change the properties file. I don't want to put it in the jar file.

However, even with the little example app that I tried creating, based on another questions/answer [here][1]:

package restestapp;

import java.util.Locale;
import java.util.ResourceBundle;


public class ResourceBundleTester
{
    public static void main(String[] args)
    {
        Locale locale = Locale.getDefault();
        String basename ="myresource";
        ResourceBundle resourceBundle = ResourceBundle.getBundle(basename, locale);
        System.out.println(resourceBundle.getString("STARTING_MYAPP"));
    }
}

Both files are here:

/home/dakoina/Documents/ResTestapp/ResTestApp.jar
/home/dakoina/Documents/ResTestapp/myresource.properties

or even

c:/temp/ResTestApp.jar
c:/temp/myresource.properties

But when I run it, it gives me this output:

dakoina@ubuntu:~/Documents/ResTestapp$ java -cp /home/dakoina/Documents/ResTestapp/ -jar "ResTestApp.jar"
Exception in thread "main" java.util.MissingResourceException: Can't find bundle for base name myresource, locale en_US
    at java.util.ResourceBundle.throwMissingResourceException(ResourceBundle.java:1539)
    at java.util.ResourceBundle.getBundleImpl(ResourceBundle.java:1278)
    at java.util.ResourceBundle.getBundle(ResourceBundle.java:805)
    at restestapp.ResTestApp.main(ResTestApp.java:19)

and in Windows, the same...

c:\temp>java -jar ResTestApp.jar
Exception in thread "main" java.util.MissingResourceException: Can't find bundle
 for base name myresource, locale en_US
        at java.util.ResourceBundle.throwMissingResourceException(Unknown Source)
        at java.util.ResourceBundle.getBundleImpl(Unknown Source)
        at java.util.ResourceBundle.getBundle(Unknown Source)
        at restestapp.ResTestApp.main(ResTestApp.java:19)
  [1]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3742158/using-resourcebundle-with-an-external-file-java

I can't see where I am wrong :/

JB Nizet JB Nizet · Accepted Answer · 2012-07-26T10:52:12

-jar means: compose the classpath from the given jar and from all the ones it references in its manifest. So the -cp option is ignored.

Your command line should be:

java -cp /home/dakoina/Documents/ResTestapp;/home/dakoina/Documents/ResTestapp/ResTestApp.jar the.main.Class

That said, a resource bundle is used to load internationalized labels. If you just want to read properties, you'd bette use the java.util.Properties class.

ResourceBundle file not found, properties file not in jar

2 Answers