Serializing a JavaBean to the WEB-INF directory or subdirectories

Question

Hello, I'm hoping someone can help me on this.
I'm working with two scenarios in WSAD Enterprise Edition 5.0.0.2 for
serializing a JavaBean (called AddressBean) to the following location
in my Web application:
/WEB-INF/classes/resources/serializable
The data corresponding to the bean I'm serializing is being stored in
a file with a name that makes it unique on the file system (e.g.
jeff.ser, jill.ser). In the first scenario, I start by getting a
FileOutputStream, then an ObjectOutputStream which is then used to
write my JavaBean as needed. All of this is done in the first
scenario from a JSP located in:
myWebApp/Web Content/jsp/JSP1.jsp
That works fine and as I'd expect. However, I'm not able to do that
in the second scenario. In this scenario, I created an additional
method in the bean itself that will actually serialize an object of
its own type to the same directory structure that I showed above (i.e.
under the WEB-INF directory). That is, in my bean, I have the
following:
public void writeDataToFile(AddressBean bean, String path) {
FileOutputStream fos = null;
ObjectOutputStream oos = null;
try {
fos = new FileOutputStream(path);
oos = new ObjectOutputStream(fos);
oos.writeObject(bean);
oos.close();
catch(Exception e) {
e.printStackTrace();
In this scenario, another JSP (call it JSP2.jsp) is creating an
instance of AddressBean by using the jsp:useBean tag. The real path
for the .ser file is figured out in the JSP code (same as was done in
JSP1.jsp), and then I delegate the serialization part to the bean
itself like so:
// In JSP2.jsp
<jsp:useBean id="ab" class="examples.beans.simple.AddressBean" />
AddressBean address = (AddressBean) pageContext.getAttribute("ab");
// get the path
String path = ...
String realPath = application.getRealPath(path);
// write the object
address.writeDataToFile(ab, realPath);
What happens is that I get a FileNotFoundException while trying to
create the FileOutputStream in the writeDataToFile() method in
AddressBean at runtime. The message in the console states:
java.io.FileNotFoundException:
C:\WINNT\Profiles\myself\Personal\IBM\wsad\myworkbench\myWebApp\Web
Content\ (Access is denied)
The source file for AddressBean is located at:
myWebApp/Java Source/examples.beans.simple.AddressBean
WHAT is going on here!? I know that everything stored underneath the
WEB-INF directory is not served to clients so I'm also assuming that
whatever stored in that directory or its subdirectories is not
accessible to clients by default. The only real difference between
the two scenarios that I've described is that in the second one, the
attempt to get a FileOutputStream is being made by a resource (i.e.
AddressBean) that is outside of the "Web Content" directory structure
in WSAD. However, the "Java Source" directory, which contains the
package housing my AddressBean class, is also under myWebApp so I'm
not seeing what the problem is at the moment.
If anyone has any ideas, suggestions, solutions, please let me know.
I'm stumped. Thank you!
Jeff

Answer 1

I figured it out, and it was my mistake. The problem was in a method defined in my AddressBean class that would take a String argument and use it to help create a unique file name (i.e. one with a .ser extension to contain the serialized bean data) for purposes of serialization later.
Basically, I was using a local variable in the method unintentionally instead of the instance variable that I had defined in the bean so my path value was null at runtime--hence the FileNotFoundException.
I'm still not sure why the (Access is denied) message was appearing, but I suspect it was b/c the absolute path that I'd end up with at runtime wasn't kosher; or, not having a destination .ser file was the problem.
In any event, I fixed the mistake and could serialize a JavaBean in several ways:
1. From a JSP directly
2. By using a method defined in the JavaBean itself
3. By passing on the request, which contained the JavaBean as an attribute, to a servlet that took care of the serialization
Jeff