title: Adding a directory to tomcat classpath and read the property file in spring
body: <p>I am trying to read the <code>test1.properties</code> file which is located at an external folder.</p>
  
  <p>here is my spring config file:</p>
  
  <pre><code>&lt;bean id="propertyConfigurer3" class="org.springframework.beans.factory.config.PropertyPlaceholderConfigurer"&gt;
      &lt;property name="ignoreUnresolvablePlaceholders" value="true"/&gt;
      &lt;property name="locations"&gt;
          &lt;list&gt;
              &lt;value&gt;classpath:test.properties&lt;/value&gt;
              &lt;value&gt;classpath:test1.properties&lt;/value&gt;
          &lt;/list&gt;
      &lt;/property&gt;
  &lt;/bean&gt;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>if I place the <code>test1.properties</code> in the <code>tomcat7/lib</code> folder, I am able to read it.
  However, I want to place it in a different directory as <code>tomcat7/env/test1.properties</code></p>
  
  <p>I have added the path to the  the <code>conf/catalina.properties</code>:</p>
  
  <pre><code>common.loader=${catalina.base}/lib,${catalina.base}/lib/*.jar,${catalina.home}/lib,${catalina.home}/lib/*.jar,${catalina.home}/env
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>This its not working, please help</p>
  
  <hr>
  
  <p><strong>solution:</strong>
  Ok.. finally fixed  it.. I had been doing it correctly this whole time.. it was my IDE which caused the problem.
  The IDE was not picking up the changes in the <code>catalina.properties</code> file. I had to delete the server config in my IDE and re configure it.</p>
  
  <p>these links were helpful in general:</p>
  
  <ul>
  <li><p><a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1300780/adding-a-directory-to-tomcat-classpath">Adding a directory to tomcat classpath</a></p></li>
  <li><p><a href="http://www.mulesoft.com/tomcat-classpath#solutions" rel="noreferrer">http://www.mulesoft.com/tomcat-classpath#solutions</a></p></li>
  </ul>