Reading a file for initialization

[Daniel Jue <te...@gmail.com>]

Hello,

If I get some answers to this, I hope it can serve as a simple guide to
newbies like myself.  I'm not entirely sure of my approach, so feel free to
interject your thoughts if you care to enlighten me.

I have a large amount of application settings stored in an XML file (so
large that I don't want to embed them in a java class), that is in a folder,
e.g.:

context/settings/MenuSettings.xml

My class that wants to read this file is:

context/WEB-INF/classes/MyPackage/AppSettings.class

And the AppSettings class contains a static instance of itself, for Tapestry
components/POJOs to reference.

Let's say I use something like Xerces to reading the xml file in, and lets
say that works fine using the main() in AppSettings.

So right now I get the feeling the MenuSettings.xml is not and shouldn't be
a Tapestry asset, since a Tapestry component is not directly accessing it.

What is the best-practices way of getting a non-Tapestry initilization file
read?
i.e. what path would I use to read MenuSettings.xml from the AppSettings
class?

I've read one thread that suggested extending some base engine class, but is
there a simpler way?

Thanks for reading,

-Daniel
Tapestry 4
Tomcat 5.5