Determine path of servlet & file resource

Question

I've got a servlet that is collecting data from an HTML form, and writing it to a csv file. Right now, I need to feed the servlet this long pathname so that it can find the file I want to write to. The file is kept in the same place as the .class file of the servlet, btw. I thought I could use paths relative to the .class file, but it's not working when I create a new File object. In this same servlet, creating a FileWriter object has no problem spotting a file jsut by passing the file name which is also kpt with the .class file, no path needed. e.g.
Where path is set up as a long string with an absolute path on the server, this works
File f = new File(path, "Test.csv");
p = new PrintWriter(new BufferedWriter(new FileWriter(f, true)));
^^^ I'm then wrapping it in Buffer & Writer and appending to it)
Why does the following work without a path being supplied??
FileWriter fw = new FileWriter("Test.txt");
And, if the answer won't help me, is there some way I can discover the relative path so that when the code is moved to another server, if the path changes it will still work? I've tried getContextPath, getRealPath, etc. on the request object, but none equal the true path. What am I missing?
- Bob

Answer 1

Both the "File" and "FileWriter" classes resolve the relative names in the same way. My guess is that your codeFileWriter fw = new FileWriter("Test.txt");APPEARS to work , because FileWriter creates the file if not found.
As far as your question of finding the directory of the servlet, i would not recommend it because it if your deploy your application as a archive, you won't really know where the application server will explode your archive. If you really want to store the data in a file, pass the path as a parameter to the servlet.