Accessing files external to the WAR

Question

Hello All,
Can any one tell how to access the HTML files which are stored outside to the WAR...
If i prefix the URL with "http://" then normal <a> tag will do the task.
Ex: *SUN* but if i give the complete absolute path like *Help* this is not working. Web server is blocking the access to the documents which are external to the application.
Any suggestions how to do this, I want to open up the HTML file which is residing in the Local file system.
Thanks
Chethan

Answer 1

It's not just external to the application, it looks like it's external to the web server itself... :)
The only thing I can think of is to write a simple servlet that accepts a path or something and returns the file for you. For example:
public class GetFile extends HttpServlet {
     public void doGet(HttpServletRequest request, HttpServletResponse response) throws ServletException, IOException {
          String path = request.getParameter("path");
          //must be html file only...
          if (path != null && path.indexOf(".") > 0 && path.substring(path.lastIndexOf(".") + 1, path.length()).equalsIgnoreCase("html")) {
               try {
                    File file = new File(path);
                    if (file.exists()) {
                         response.setContentType("text/html");
                         InputStream input = new FileInputStream(file);
                         OutputStream output = response.getOutputStream();
                         byte[] buffer = new byte[1024];
                         while (input.read(buffer) > 0) {
                              output.write(buffer);
                         output.flush();
                         output.close();
                         input.close();
                    else {
                         response.getWriter().println("Unable to find file " + path);
               catch(Exception ex) {
                    StringWriter sw = new StringWriter();
                    PrintWriter pw = new PrintWriter(sw);
                    ex.printStackTrace(pw);
                    response.getWriter().println(sw.toString());
          else {
               response.getWriter().println("No path or invalid path specified");
}This is just a quick hack, you will need to do some tweaking of course. Security would be my biggest concern with something like this.