[FIXED] How to get absolute path with proper character encoding in Java?

Issue

I'd like to get the absolute path of a file, so that I can use it further to locate this file. I do it the following way:

File file = new File(Swagger2MarkupConverterTest.class.getResource(
            "/json/swagger.json").getFile());   
String tempPath = file.getAbsolutePath();
String path = tempPath.replace("\\", "\\\\");

The path irl looks like this:

C:\\Users\\Michał Szydłowski\\workspace2\\swagger2markup\\bin\\json\\swagger.json

However, since it contains Polish characters and spaces, what I get from getAbsolutPath is:

C:\\Users\\Micha%c5%82%20Szyd%c5%82owski\\workspace2\\swagger2markup\\bin\\json\\swagger.json

How can I get it to do it the right way? This is problematic, because with this path, it cannot locate the file (says it doesn't exist).

Solution

The URL.getFile call you are using returns the file part of a URL encoded according to the URL encoding rules. You need to decode the string using URLDecoder before giving it to File:

String path = Swagger2MarkupConverterTest.class.getResource(
        "/json/swagger.json").getFile();

path = URLDecoder.decode(path, "UTF-8");

File file = new File(path);

From Java 7 onwards you can use StandardCharsets.UTF_8

path = URLDecoder.decode(path, StandardCharsets.UTF_8);

Answered By - greg-449
Answer Checked By - Dawn Plyler (JavaFixing Volunteer)