Source : http://jaitechwriteups.blogspot.com/2007/01/how-to-read-properties-file-in-web.html

How to read a properties file in a web application

The code to do this is pretty simple. But going by the number of people who keep asking this question, i thought i would post the code over here. Let's consider that you have a war file named SampleApp.war which has a properties file named myApp.properties at it's root :

SampleApp.war
   |
   |-------- myApp.properties
   |
   |-------- WEB-INF
                |
                |---- classes
                         |
                         |----- org
                                 |------ myApp
                                           |------- MyPropertiesReader.class

Here root folder in war is equivalent to Source Folder in Netbeans.
That means you have to keep your properties file in default package of your Source Files folder.
Let's assume that you want to read the property named "abc" present in the properties file:

----------------
myApp.properties:
----------------

abc=some value
xyz=some other value

Let's consider that the class org.myApp.MyPropertiesReader present in your application wants to read the property. Here's the code for the same:

package org.myapp;

import java.io.IOException;
import java.io.InputStream;
import java.util.Properties;

/**
 * Simple class meant to read a properties file
 * 
 * @author Jaikiran Pai
 * 
 */
public class MyPropertiesReader {

    /**
     * Default Constructor
     * 
     */
    public MyPropertiesReader() {

    }

    /**
     * Some Method
     * 
     * @throws IOException
     * 
     */
    public void doSomeOperation() throws IOException {
        // Get the inputStream
        InputStream inputStream = this.getClass().getClassLoader()
                .getResourceAsStream("myApp.properties");

        Properties properties = new Properties();

        System.out.println("InputStream is: " + inputStream);

        // load the inputStream using the Properties
        properties.load(inputStream);
        // get the value of the property
        String propValue = properties.getProperty("abc");

        System.out.println("Property value is: " + propValue);
    }

}

Pretty straight-forward. Now suppose the properties file is not at the root of the application, but inside a folder (let's name it config) in the web application, something like:

SampleApp.war
   |
   |-------- config
   |           |------- myApp.properties   
   |           
   |
   |-------- WEB-INF
                |
                |---- classes
                         |
                         |----- org
                                 |------ myApp
                                           |------- MyPropertiesReader.class

There will just be one line change in the above code:

public void doSomeOperation() throws IOException {
        //Get the inputStream-->This time we have specified the folder name too.
        InputStream inputStream = this.getClass().getClassLoader()
                .getResourceAsStream("config/myApp.properties");
        
        Properties properties = new Properties();
         
        System.out.println("InputStream is: " + inputStream);
        
        //load the inputStream using the Properties
        properties.load(inputStream);
        //get the value of the property
        String propValue = properties.getProperty("abc");
        
        System.out.println("Property value is: " + propValue);
    }

That's all that is required to get it working.