Things on this page are fragmentary and immature notes/thoughts of the author. Please read with your own judgement!

1. getResource and getResourceAsStream tries to find files in the resources directory under src/main/resources or src/test/resources (depending on whether you are running the application or tests for the application). If the specified file is not found, null is returned (which might cause NullPointerExceptions if you make a mistake specifying the resource to use).

2. getClass.getResource requires a leading / in the file name to find.

   getClass().getResource("/some_file_to_find")
   

   Another way is to use getClass().getClassLoader().getResource, and you must not have a leading / for files.

   getClass().getClassLoader().getResource("some_file_to_find")
   

3. getResource returns an URL object. You can use the getFile or getPath method to get the path of the file. Both of these 2 methods return a String.