Eclipse web directory confusion / naming problems

Question

In my Eclipse project called DicDist in a workspace called C:\_eclipse\ , I have a web directory that when I call :
getServlet().getServletContext().getRealPath("/pictures/") ,
it resolves to :
C:\_eclipseworkspace\.metadata\.plugins\org.eclipse.wst.server.core\tmp0\webapps\DocDist\pictures\
but when I created the "/pictures/" directory I created the directory in the eclipse project, I created it as c:\_eclipseworkspace\DocDist\pictures
The result is when I save files uploaded by my application,it saves saves them in this obscure eclipse only directory
rather than where logically it should be saved .
In other pages of the application, when I go to retrieve the files via a reference to "/pictures/myfile.jpg' etc.., it can't find them because Eclipse has dumped them into it's own internal directory under c:\_eclipseworkspace\DocDist\.metadata.\.plugins\...etc
For me ,it seems the servlet context should be
c:\_eclipseworkspace\DocDist
not
c:\_eclipseworkspace\DocDist\.metadat.plugins\etc....
Can anyone tell me what gives or give me advice on how to keep my directory names straight?
Bascially, all I am trying to do is upload files to the webserver via my app and then let user download them later via the same app.
If property files are the best way to go ,I'm not sure how to use property files in my app to do this.
Thanks

Answer 1

Eclipse doesn't deploy your webapp into your workspace.
It copies all the files that it needs elsewhere on the disk, and runs the webapp from there.
That is why the servletContext realPath is pointing elsewhere on your computer.
That is not necessarily a problem once you have deployed the web application out into a proper server, because it won't necessarily copy things around like that so much.
I would still probably put the pictures directory outside of the webapp, because the web application files can sometimes be deleted (particularly if you deploy it as a WAR)
There are various ways to provide the value
- as a context parameter in web.xml
In your web.xml
<context-param>
  <param-name>pictureDirectory</param-name>
  <param-value>c:\pictures</param-value>
</context-param>You can then get this value with servlletContext.getInitParameter("pictureDirectory");