How to load hibernate.cfg.xml from different directory

Hibernate XML configuration file “hibernate.cfg.xml” is always put at the root of your project classpath, outside of any package. If you place this configuration file into a different directory, you may encounter the following error :

Initial SessionFactory creation failed.org.hibernate.HibernateException: 
/hibernate.cfg.xml not found

Exception in thread "main" java.lang.ExceptionInInitializerError
	at com.mkyong.persistence.HibernateUtil.buildSessionFactory(HibernateUtil.java:25)
	at com.mkyong.persistence.HibernateUtil.<clinit>(HibernateUtil.java:8)
	at com.mkyong.common.App.main(App.java:11)
Caused by: org.hibernate.HibernateException: /hibernate.cfg.xml not found
	at org.hibernate.util.ConfigHelper.getResourceAsStream(ConfigHelper.java:147)
	at org.hibernate.cfg.Configuration.getConfigurationInputStream(Configuration.java:1405)
	at org.hibernate.cfg.Configuration.configure(Configuration.java:1427)
	at org.hibernate.cfg.Configuration.configure(Configuration.java:1414)
	at com.mkyong.persistence.HibernateUtil.buildSessionFactory(HibernateUtil.java:13)
	... 2 more

To ask Hibernate look for your “hibernate.cfg.xml” file in other directory, you can modify the default Hibernate’s SessionFactory class by passing your “hibernate.cfg.xml” file path as an argument into the configure() method:

            SessionFactory sessionFactory = new Configuration()
            .configure("/com/mkyong/persistence/hibernate.cfg.xml")
            .buildSessionFactory();
            
            return sessionFactory;

HibernateUtil.java

Full Example in HibernateUtil.java, to load “hibernate.cfg.xml” from directory “/com/mkyong/persistence/“.

import org.hibernate.SessionFactory;
import org.hibernate.cfg.Configuration;

public class HibernateUtil {

	private static final SessionFactory sessionFactory = buildSessionFactory();

	private static SessionFactory buildSessionFactory() {
		try {
			// load from different directory
			SessionFactory sessionFactory = new Configuration().configure(
					"/com/mkyong/persistence/hibernate.cfg.xml")
					.buildSessionFactory();

			return sessionFactory;

		} catch (Throwable ex) {
			// Make sure you log the exception, as it might be swallowed
			System.err.println("Initial SessionFactory creation failed." + ex);
			throw new ExceptionInInitializerError(ex);
		}
	}

	public static SessionFactory getSessionFactory() {
		return sessionFactory;
	}

	public static void shutdown() {
		// Close caches and connection pools
		getSessionFactory().close();
	}

}

Done.