get current web application path in java

This is a code snippet to retrieve the path of the current running web application project in java

public String getPath() throws UnsupportedEncodingException {
String path = this.getClass().getClassLoader().getResource("").getPath();
String fullPath = URLDecoder.decode(path, "UTF-8");
String pathArr[] = fullPath.split("/WEB-INF/classes/");
System.out.println(fullPath);
System.out.println(pathArr[0]);
fullPath = pathArr[0];

String reponsePath = "";
// to read a file from webcontent
reponsePath = new File(fullPath).getPath() + File.separatorChar + "newfile.txt";
return reponsePath;
}