Accessing Files in Jar File as part of Web App

Question

I have put a number of NON-CLASS files in a jar file that resides in WEB-INF/lib in my webapp (running tomcat). These include xml files, xml schemas, images, etc. I would like to give my webapp programmatic access to these non-class files, such as providing the user with a list of all of the xml files in the jar file. I have seen a number of posts on this topic, but no answers.
I have tried everything that I can think of, to no avail. ServletContext.getResource() with just about any path fails. If I do: ServletContext.getResourcePaths(), I get a list of all of the jar files in WEB-INF/lib (as well as other resources). The jar files are listed as: "jndi:/localhost/WEB-INF/lib/XXXXX.jar". If I use that value in ServletContext.getResource(), it does not work. It appears that I need to set up a JNDI context if I want to get the jar file, using: File f = (File)context.lookup(...). this may or may not work, but I can't figure out how to set up the JNDI context for purposes of tomcat. Right now, this is the only thing that I can think of.
It would also be great if there was some way to take a path in the jar file, treat it as a directory, and list all of the files in that "directory".

Answer 1

Thanks. That got me started. You need to put the full path to the file you want. here is the full code, either for getting an individual file or for getting the entire jar file, so that you can enumerate through it and read any file you want (this is for a non-binary file):
URL url = this.getClass().getResource("/path/path/path/file.xml"); // need full path
if(url != null)
     JarURLConnection conn = (JarURLConnection)url.openConnection();
     JarFile jarfile = conn.getJarFile();
     JarEntry jarEntry = conn.getJarEntry();
     BufferedReader br = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(jarfile.getInputStream(jarEntry)));
     StringBuffer sb = new StringBuffer();
     String line = null;
     while((line = br.readLine()) != null)
               sb.append(line);
               sb.append(System.getProperty("line.separator"));
     br.close();
String fileContents = sb.toString();