Setting freemarker template from classpath

this is what ended up working for me:

freemarkerConfiguration = new Configuration(Configuration.VERSION_2_3_28);
freemarkerConfiguration.setClassForTemplateLoading(this.getClass(), "/");
Template freemarkerTemplate = freemarkerConfiguration.getTemplate("email/vendor.tpl");

In 2017, the following is deprecated:

Configuration conf = new Configuration();

We should pass freemarker.template.Version to the constructor:

Configuration conf = new Configuration(new Version(2, 3, 23));
conf.setClassForTemplateLoading(Application.class, "/views");

where the version numbers refer to the current version of FreeMarker.

The views directory is located in src/main/resources.

freemarkerConfiguration = new Configuration();
freemarkerConfiguration.setClassForTemplateLoading(this.getClass(), "");
Template freemarkerTemplate = freemarkerConfiguration.getTemplate("template.tpl");

Use this method to load the classes from the package where your class is located, so if your class is

org.foo.SomeClass the templates will be looked for in /org/foo in the classpath. This keeps your templates stored with the class that uses/loads them.

If you are using Struts 2 and the Conventions plugin, wuntee's solution doesn't seem to work: setClassForTemplateLoading in turn creates an instance of ClassTemplateLoader which doesn't find files in jars no matter what path prefix is specified.

Instead, create an instance of StrutsClassTemplateLoader. (I do this in a custom sub-class of FreemarkerManager in its getTemplateLoader method.) It takes no parameters, so presumably it just knows how Struts and Conventions do things.