SparkJava: Image Files

and any other static files your application needs

If:

you want to includes background images (e.g. .jpg, .png, .gif, etc) files on the pages of your web app, and
those are static files (i.e. you have files like cat1.jpg and goldenGate.png rather than images you are uploading to the app (that you might, for example, store in a MongoDB or other database)

then, this page describes a solution for you. (Note: this solution is partially documented on the SparkJava documentation but that version leaves out a few crucial details.)

Make a directory src/main/resources/public/images
- You can use the command mkdir -p src/main/resources/public/images from your top level directory.
Put the image files in the directory: src/main/resources/public/images
Add this line to your code: staticFiles.location(“/public”); // Static files
In your HTML code:
- if the file is /src/main/resources/public/images/cat1.jpg,
- your img element should be: <img src="/images/cat1.jpg"> Note: do not include the /src/main/resources part in your src attribute value.
You must do mvn compile each time you make changes to the contents of /src/main/resources/public,
or for that matter, any file or directory under /src/main/resources if you want those changes to take effect, even if you make no changes to Java source code.

The reason: the mvn compile step does more than just compile your java code; it also copies all of the contents of the src/main/resources directory into the CLASSPATH.

`

More on SparkJava: Image Files