context path for file upload without HttpRequest in REST application - file-upload

Question

I am building REST application. I want to upload a file and I want to save it for example in /WEB-INF/resource/uploads
How can I get path to this directory ? My Controller looks like this
#RequestMapping(value = "/admin/house/update", method = RequestMethod.POST)
public String updateHouse(House house, #RequestParam("file") MultipartFile file, Model model) {
try {
String fileName = null;
InputStream inputStream = null;
OutputStream outputStream = null;
if (file.getSize() > 0) {
inputStream = file.getInputStream();
fileName = "D:/" + file.getOriginalFilename();
outputStream = new FileOutputStream(fileName);
int readBytes = 0;
byte[] buffer = new byte[10000];
while ((readBytes = inputStream.read(buffer, 0, 10000)) != -1) {
outputStream.write(buffer, 0, readBytes);
}
outputStream.close();
inputStream.close();
}
} catch(Exception ex) {
ex.printStackTrace();
}
model.addAttribute("step", 3);
this.houseDao.update(house);
return "houseAdmin";
}
Second question...what is the best place to upload user files ?

Answer 1

/WEB-INF is a bad place to try to store file uploads. There's no guarantee that this is an actual directory on the disk, and even if it is, the appserver may forbid write access to it.
Where you should store your files depends on what you want to do with them, and what operating system you're running on. Just pick somewhere outside of the webapp itself, is my advice. Perhaps create a dedicated directory
Also, the process of transferring the MultipartFile to another location is much simpler than you're making it out to be:
#RequestMapping(value = "/admin/house/update", method = RequestMethod.POST)
public String updateHouse(House house, #RequestParam("file") MultipartFile srcFile, Model model) throws IOException {
File destFile = new File("/path/to/the/target/file");
srcFile.transferTo(destFile); // easy!
model.addAttribute("step", 3);
this.houseDao.update(house);
return "houseAdmin";
}

Answer 2

You shouldn't store files in /WEB-INF/resource/uploads. This directory is either inside your WAR (if packaged) or exploded somewhere inside servlet container. The first destination is read-only and the latter should not be used for user files.
There are usually two places considered when storing uploaded files:
Some dedicated folder. Make sure users cannot access this directory directly (e.g. anonymous FTP folder). Note that once your application runs on more than one machine you won't have access to this folder. So consider some form of network synchronization or a shared network drive.
Database. This is controversial since binary files tend to occupy a lot of space. But this approach is a bit simpler when distributing your application.