How to open a document out side the .war file

Question

Hi all,
I have initially stored a document outside the WEB-INF in the .war file to retrieve it from a jsp file of the same war file. But now the file has been stored at a location on the same server and outside the .war file. how can I retrieve the file path and location outside the war file from the jsp. I ve previously used the following code when retrieving from a directory "docs" of the same .war file as:
                  <td  class="FormLableLeft"><a href="#" onClick=window.open("/docs/<%=colData.get("DOCUMENT_NAME")%>")><%=colData.get("File_NAME")%></a> </td>please suggest me how to retrieve the document located outside the war.

Answer 1

Create a servlet which reads the file from the local file system and writes it to the outputstream of the response after having set the response headers accordingly. Then simply call that servlet by URL along with the file ID as request parameter or pathinfo. You may find this example useful: [http://balusc.blogspot.com/2007/07/fileservlet.html].