How can I provide a relative path for H2 database file, using hibernate under Tomcat?

Question

I have a setup which must be fairly common: I have an H2 db, with a db file. I'm using the db in standalone mode. Hibernate provides access to db and I've deployed my code into Tomcat.

The problem is: I could not find a nice way of simply putting the db file into the war and providing a relative path in hibernate config file.

At the moment, I have to use a path to c://whatever_db_file_container_dir/dbname in hibernate config.

This stops me from deploying a zero config web app. Is there a way of turning this setup into a self containing zero configuration package?

Answer 1

Currently, H2 doesn't support databases in the classpath (there is a feature request for it, but it's not yet implemented). But this would only work for read-only databases. Unfortunately, H2 also doesn't support system properties in the database URL yet.

However, Hibernate supports Programmatic configuration. I am not sure how to get the directory of the web application in Tomcat, but I know about catalina.home and catalina.base. So when starting your application, get value of the catalina.home system property, and set the Hibernate system property with the database URL accordingly. I didn't try myself, but this is how it should work.

Answer 2

If you do not want to wait for the feature implemented you can set H2 (or HSQL, derby) url dynamically in your code. Check http://www.jvmhost.com/spring-hosting for code example.