There are differences and constraints in options offered by @Steve C and @ashosborne1. They must be specified, I believe.
When can we can use: File resourcesDirectory = new File("src/test/resources");
?
- 1 When tests are going to be run via maven only but not via IDE.
- 2.1 When tests are going to be run via maven or
- 2.2 via IDE and only one project is imported into IDE. (I use “imported” term, cause it is used in IntelliJ IDEA. I think users of eclipse also import their maven project). This will work, cause working directory when you run tests via IDE is the same as your project.
- 3.1 When tests are going to be run via maven or
- 3.2 via IDE, and more than one projects are imported into IDE (when you are not a student, you usually import several projects), AND before you run tests via IDE, you manually configure working directory for your tests. That working directory should refer to your imported project that contains the tests. By default, working directory of all projects imported into IDE is only one. Probably it is a restriction of
IntelliJ IDEA
only, but I think all IDEs work like this. And this configuration that must be done manually, is not good at all. Working with several tests existing in different maven projects, but imported into one big “IDE” project, force us to remember this and don’t allow to relax and get pleasure from your work.
Solution offered by @ashosborne1 (personally I prefer this one) requires 2 additional requirements that must be done before you run tests. Here is a list of steps to use this solution:
Create a test folder (“teva”) and file (“readme”) inside of “src/test/resources/”:
src/test/resources/teva/readme
File must be created in the test folder, otherwise, it will not work. Maven ignores empty folders.
At least once build project via mvn clean install
. It will run tests also. It may be enough to run only your test class/method via maven without building a whole project. As a result your test resources will be copied into test-classes, here is a path: target/test-classes/teva/readme
After that, you can access the folder using code, already offered by @ashosborne1 (I'm sorry, that I could not edit this code inside of this list of items correctly):
public static final String TEVA_FOLDER = "teva"; ...
URL tevaUrl = YourTest.class.getClassLoader().getResource(TEVA_FOLDER);
String tevaTestFolder = new File(tevaUrl.toURI()).getAbsolutePath();
Now you can run your test via IDE as many times as you want. Until you run mvn clean. It will drop the target folder.
Creating file inside a test folder and running maven first time, before you run tests via IDE are needed steps. Without these steps, if you just in your IDE create test resources, then write test and run it via IDE only, you'll get an error. Running tests via mvn copies test resources into target/test-classes/teva/readme and they become accessible for a classloader.
You may ask, why do I need import more than one maven project in IDE and why so many complicated things? For me, one of the main motivation: keeping IDA-related files far from code. I first create a new project in my IDE. It is a fake project, that is just a holder of IDE-related files. Then, I import already existing maven projects. I force these imported projects to keep IDEA files in my original fake project only. As a result I don't see IDE-related files among the code. SVN should not see them (don't offer to configure svn/git to ignore such files, please). Also it is just very convenient.
org.junit.rules.TemporaryFolder
all the time... but... to copy from test/resources you need to know, er, its path! – mike rodent