Display Images From a Non-Project Directory in JSF

When using image related tags in JSF we come across a situation where we need to display an image from the system which is not in the project directory. The images which are in the project directory are easily displayed using the relative path in the "src" or "value" attribute in these tags but displaying images using absolute path is not possible directly in JSF using these tags.

A technique to do this is explained in this article which uses a servlet to respond to the image url which we send.

1)Provide the following entry in web.xml:

<servlet-mapping>
<servlet-name>DynamicImageServlet</servlet-name>
<url-pattern>/images/dynamic/*</url-pattern>
</servlet-mapping> 

2)In your xhtml/jsp file call the servlet as shown below:

<h:graphicImage value="/images/dynamic/?file=test.jpg"/>

3)Create the following servlet class

public class DynamicImageServlet extends HttpServlet {

protected void doGet(HttpServletRequest request, HttpServletResponse response) throws ServletException, IOException

{

  try {

   // Get image file.

   String file = request.getParameter("file");

    BufferedInputStream in = new BufferedInputStream(new FileInputStream("Image directory:/" + file));

    // Get image contents.
byte[] bytes = new byte[in.available()];

   in.read(bytes);
   in.close();

   // Write image contents to response.
   response.getOutputStream().write(bytes);

} catch (IOException e) {

e.printStackTrace();

}

}

}

Explanation of servlet code:
The url (/images/dynamic/?file=test.jpg) specified with the parameter "file" in the xhtml file calls the servlet based on the entry in the web.xml file.

The servlet's doGet() method receives the request and processes it to write the response in the form of the image from the system.

The "Image directory" specified in the servlet class is the system directory from where you want to read the image.