java.nio.file.Path for a classpath resource

It turns out you can do this, with the help of the built-in Zip File System provider. However, passing a resource URI directly to Paths.get won't work; instead, one must first create a zip filesystem for the jar URI without the entry name, then refer to the entry in that filesystem:

static Path resourceToPath(URL resource)
throws IOException,
       URISyntaxException {

    Objects.requireNonNull(resource, "Resource URL cannot be null");
    URI uri = resource.toURI();

    String scheme = uri.getScheme();
    if (scheme.equals("file")) {
        return Paths.get(uri);
    }

    if (!scheme.equals("jar")) {
        throw new IllegalArgumentException("Cannot convert to Path: " + uri);
    }

    String s = uri.toString();
    int separator = s.indexOf("!/");
    String entryName = s.substring(separator + 2);
    URI fileURI = URI.create(s.substring(0, separator));

    FileSystem fs = FileSystems.newFileSystem(fileURI,
        Collections.<String, Object>emptyMap());
    return fs.getPath(entryName);
}

Update:

It’s been rightly pointed out that the above code contains a resource leak, since the code opens a new FileSystem object but never closes it. The best approach is to pass a Consumer-like worker object, much like how Holger’s answer does it. Open the ZipFS FileSystem just long enough for the worker to do whatever it needs to do with the Path (as long as the worker doesn’t try to store the Path object for later use), then close the FileSystem.

Guessing that what you want to do, is call Files.lines(...) on a resource that comes from the classpath - possibly from within a jar.

Since Oracle convoluted the notion of when a Path is a Path by not making getResource return a usable path if it resides in a jar file, what you need to do is something like this:

Stream<String> stream = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(ClassLoader.getSystemResourceAsStream("/filename.txt"))).lines();

This one works for me:

return Path.of(ClassLoader.getSystemResource(resourceName).toURI());

The most general solution is as follows:

interface IOConsumer<T> {
    void accept(T t) throws IOException;
}
public static void processRessource(URI uri, IOConsumer<Path> action) throws IOException{
    try {
        Path p=Paths.get(uri);
        action.accept(p);
    }
    catch(FileSystemNotFoundException ex) {
        try(FileSystem fs = FileSystems.newFileSystem(
                uri, Collections.<String,Object>emptyMap())) {
            Path p = fs.provider().getPath(uri);
            action.accept(p);
        }
    }
}

The main obstacle is to deal with the two possibilities, either, having an existing filesystem that we should use, but not close (like with file URIs or the Java 9’s module storage), or having to open and thus safely close the filesystem ourselves (like zip/jar files).

Therefore, the solution above encapsulates the actual action in an interface, handles both cases, safely closing afterwards in the second case, and works from Java 7 to Java 18. It probes whether there is already an open filesystem before opening a new one, so it also works in the case that another component of your application has already opened a filesystem for the same zip/jar file.

It can be used in all Java versions named above, e.g. to list the contents of a package (java.lang in the example) as Paths, like this:

processRessource(Object.class.getResource("Object.class").toURI(),new IOConsumer<Path>(){
    public void accept(Path path) throws IOException {
        try(DirectoryStream<Path> ds = Files.newDirectoryStream(path.getParent())) {
            for(Path p: ds)
                System.out.println(p);
        }
    }
});

With Java 8 or newer, you can use lambda expressions or method references to represent the actual action, e.g.

processRessource(Object.class.getResource("Object.class").toURI(), path -> {
    try(Stream<Path> stream = Files.list(path.getParent())) {
        stream.forEach(System.out::println);
    }
});

to do the same.

---

The final release of Java 9’s module system has broken the above code example. The Java versions from 9 to 12 inconsistently return the path /java.base/java/lang/Object.class for Paths.get(Object.class.getResource("Object.class")) whereas it should be /modules/java.base/java/lang/Object.class. This can be fixed by prepending the missing /modules/ when the parent path is reported as non-existent:

processRessource(Object.class.getResource("Object.class").toURI(), path -> {
    Path p = path.getParent();
    if(!Files.exists(p))
        p = p.resolve("/modules").resolve(p.getRoot().relativize(p));
    try(Stream<Path> stream = Files.list(p)) {
        stream.forEach(System.out::println);
    }
});

Then, it will again work with all versions and storage methods. Starting with JDK 13, this work-around is not necessary anymore.