Reading a config file from servlet

Question

I am having an issue where my servlet on init() is trying to read a file from the filesystem in order to override the log4j configuration for the application.
Code in servlet:
ServletContext context = getServletContext();
String logInitFile =
context.getInitParameter("log-init-file");
if (logInitFile != null) {
File file = new File(context.getRealPath(logInitFile));
if (file.exists()) {
logInitFile = context.getRealPath(logInitFile);
LogManager.getLogManager().readConfiguration(logInitFile);
ServletLogAppender.setServletContext(context);
logger = LogManager.getLogManager().getLogger(CLASS_NAME);
logger.debug("Log file was loaded from \"" + logInitFile + "\"");
END CODE
My orion-web.xml has an entry pointing to
<context-param-mapping name="log-init-file">C:\jDev9052\j2ee\home\application-deployments\speed\log4j.xml</context-param-mapping>
The error I am getting is a NullPointerException on the
File file = new File(context.getRealPath(logInitFile));
line.
The point of this is to override the log4j.xml file that is packaged in the /classes folder of the .ear file with one specific to its deployment target (i.e. production, test, etc).
This worked in 9.0.2 but now that I am upgrading to 9.0.5.2 it is not working.
Is this possible to do anymore? Could someone assist.

Answer 1

I just had -and solved- the same problem. The cause was that you tried to use getServletContext().getRealPath() to resolve the file name. That only works if the file is located some place where your Web container could serve it up as a file; i.e. getRealPath() translates a path from a Web URL into a file path.
If you have your file in the Jar, chances are it's not even accessible as a file. I used getClass().getClassLoader().getResource() to give me a URL, and used that as an argument to log4j methods.