title: Can Struts 1.x Resource Bundles be placed elsewhere than the classes directory?
body: <p><strong>This is for Struts 1.x</strong> (I'm using 1.3.10).  </p>
  
  <p>I've noticed that Struts is unable to pick up resource bundles in the <code>ApplicationResources.properties</code> file if it is <em>not</em> placed somewhere in the <em>default</em> classpath (e.g., <code>com.abc.SomePackage</code>). </p>
  
  <p>For instance, if I put the <code>ApplicationResources.properties</code> file in a custom folder <code>/WEB-INF/strutsResources</code> and configure the struts-config.xml thus:  </p>
  
  <p><code>&lt;message-resources parameter="/WEB-INF/strutsResources/ApplicationResources"/&gt;</code>  </p>
  
  <p>I've <a href="http://www.learntechnology.net/content/struts/message_resources.jsp" rel="nofollow">read</a> that the resources need to be on the classpath so I've also tried adding the <code>/WEB-INF/strutsResources</code> folder to the classpath. It still does <em>not</em> pick up the resource keys.</p>
  
  <p>I've double-checked that the <code>strutsResources</code> folder <em>is</em> actually deployed to the server (I'm using Glassfish v3), so the file is there, it's just not being parsed.</p>
  
  <p>P.S.  </p>
  
  <ol>
  <li>If you're wondering why I'm trying to do this, I just wanted to organize my code a little better ("better," IMO). Since the <code>ApplicationResources.properties</code> file is not really a class, I wanted to place it in a resources folder by itself.  </li>
  <li>I've checked that placing the ApplicationResources file in a package in the src directory works just fine.</li>
  </ol>