Spring – File inside jar is not visible for spring

return new File(MyClass.class.getProtectionDomain().getCodeSource().getLocation()
    .toURI()).getPath();

Replace "MyClass" with the name of your class.

Obviously, this will do odd things if your class was loaded from a non-file location.

This should work, I just created the 2 projects and checked.

Project A (standard Maven project created with STS) has applicationContext.xml in src/main/resources.

pom.xml:

<project xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0 http://maven.apache.org/xsd/maven-4.0.0.xsd">
<modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>
<groupId>org.D</groupId>
<artifactId>A</artifactId>
<version>0.0.1-SNAPSHOT</version>

<properties>        
    <spring.version>3.0.5.RELEASE</spring.version>
</properties>

<dependencies>
    <dependency>
        <groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
        <artifactId>spring-context</artifactId>
        <version>${spring.version}</version>
    </dependency>
</dependencies>
</project>

applicationContext.xml:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans.xsd">

<bean id="myAdder" class="com.foo.bar.MyAdder">
    <property name="foo" value="bar" />
</bean>

</beans>

Project B:

pom.xml: same as A, except A is added as dependency:

<dependency>
   <groupId>org.D</groupId>
   <artifactId>A</artifactId>
   <version>0.0.1-SNAPSHOT</version>
</dependency>

Start.java in project B:

public static void main(String[] args) {
    ApplicationContext context = new ClassPathXmlApplicationContext(
            "classpath*:**/applicationContext*.xml");

    MyAdder myAdder = (MyAdder) context.getBean("myAdder");
    System.out.println(myAdder.getFoo());
}

mvn install A first, then run Start in project B.