I have a bunch of text, xml and other files (i.e. resources) that I need to access using servlets in java web app. For example, there is an xml file, a part of which is returned with a servlet by a user query. I am using Tomcat. What is the best practice to store these files and access them from java code? 1) What are the default folders where should I put them, do I need to put them into Web archive or into one of the Jars? 2) How to access the files from java code? How can I set the path to them so it will work in any environment? P.S. I've read a number of posts related to this topic, most of which recommend to store resources in jars and access them using java.lang.Class.getResourceAsStream(String). It seems strange because classes and data should be separated.