How to read a text file from a web application

I am writing a Jersey Restful service to be deployed on Tomcat via a war file. The service needs to read data in 3 text files. The text files need to exist on the file system or read from the classpath. I have tried to read the data from the file system and classpath but neither are working. I would be happy with either way - it doesn't matter. If it was to use the following code,can someone tell me where to place the text file specified so that the code picks up the file? ``` BufferedReader br = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader (this.getClass().getClassLoader().getResourceAsStream("myfile.txt"))); ``` I am getting a null pointer exception. If I was to read the file from the file system, use the following code, where do I place the files in my Jar? ``` FileInputStream fs = new FileInputStream("myFile.txt"); DataInputStream is = new DataInputStream(fs); BufferedReader br = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(is)); ``` I am getting a FileNotFound exception. Any suggestions are welcome.