How to read several resource files with the same name from different JARs?

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You need ClassLoader.getResources(name)
(or the static version ClassLoader.getSystemResources(name)).

But unfortunately there’s a known issue with resources that are not inside a “directory”. E.g. foo/bar.txt is fine, but bar.txt can be a problem. This is described well in the Spring Reference, although it is by no means a Spring-specific problem.

Update:

Here’s a helper method that returns a list of InputStreams:

public static List<InputStream> loadResources(
        final String name, final ClassLoader classLoader) throws IOException {
    final List<InputStream> list = new ArrayList<InputStream>();
    final Enumeration<URL> systemResources = 
            (classLoader == null ? ClassLoader.getSystemClassLoader() : classLoader)
            .getResources(name);
    while (systemResources.hasMoreElements()) {
        list.add(systemResources.nextElement().openStream());
    }
    return list;
}

Usage:

List<InputStream> resources = loadResources("config.properties", classLoader);
// or:
List<InputStream> resources = loadResources("config.properties", null);

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