Trouble with file paths

Question

Hi,
I'm trying to read a XML file using:
XMLDocBuilder.java
public Document getXML(String filepath) throws SAXException, IOException, ParserConfigurationException
          File myFile = new File(filepath);          
          DocumentBuilderFactory dbf = DocumentBuilderFactory.newInstance();
          dbf.setNamespaceAware(false);
          DocumentBuilder docBuilder = dbf.newDocumentBuilder();
          Document myDoc = docBuilder.parse(myFile);
          return myDoc;
     }If I run it directly from Eclipse/Tomcat, it works fine, but if I try to run it from the browser I get the exception "java.io.FileNotFoundException: C:\Documents and Settings\daugusto\content.xml (The system couldn't find the specified file)". (The file isn't there, it's on D:\MyFiles\myProject\WebContent\content.xml)
I've tried quite some ways now and still couldn't get this to work.
How can I get it to work from a browser?

Answer 1

The class receives the filepath argument from a JSP page, after the user submits a form.
I'm trying to load the XML Document and return it to the JSP page so I can work with it's elements. Using the <input type="file"> component?
You don't want to retrieve the file using the java.io library.
The server normally doesn't have access to the client file system. The only exception is when you are a developer working on your local machine where the server and the client are one and the same. That is not the general case :-).
Intead use a library like the apache commons file upload to read the binary data of the file uploaded.
cheers,
evnafets