I'm developing a JSF web application, with the current 2.1.7 JSF version.
Actually, I have a login page, associated with a session bean,
which calls to a logic class "PersonCatalog",
which is responsible for reading a text file .txt with the information of the persons, like a database but with files.
The problem is to access the file, 
ever I get a NullException because the program doesn't finds the file.
I'm not sure about the path I choose, here is the directory herarchy:
Application
 |-- build
 |-- src
       |--eci
           |--pdsw2012
               |--shoeople
                   |--beans
                       |--loginBean and others ...
                   |--logic
                       |--PersonCatalog and others...
                   |--persistence
                       |--files
                           |--persons.txt
 |-- WebContent
       |--WEB-INF
       |--META-INF
       |--a lot of xhtml pages ...
I'm using in PersonCatalog for read the person.txt file the follow code:
File readFile = new File(new String("src/eci/pdsw2012/shoeople/persistence/files/persons.txt"));
But I get:
java.lang.NullPointerException
at eci.pdsw2012.shoeople.logic.PersonCatalog.loadFile(PersonCatalog.java:31)
I have used the ExternalContext().getRealPath(), but it only shows inside Web-content folder.
I'm using Eclipse, and the default route is the installation folder of Eclipse, the is so strange:
String ruta = System.getProperty("user.dir");
System.out.println("DirAbs: " + ruta.getAbsolutePath());
and prints
 C:/Eclipse/
 
     
    