In manifest.mf, the classpath is defined using the class-path key and a space-delimited list of files, as follows:
MANIFEST.MF at root of jarfile.
Class-Path: hd1.jar path/to/label007.jar path/to/foo.jar
If there are spaces in the jar filename, you should enclose them in quotes.
If it's a webapp, the reports path should be in your BOOT-INF subdirectory of your classpath -- this is automatically performed by maven if you put it in src/main/resources in the standard layout.
EDIT:
Now that you've clarified what you're trying to do, you have 2 approaches. Like I said above, you can grab the file from the BOOT-INF subdirectory of your webapp or you can enumerate the entries in the jar until you find the one you want:
JarInputStream is = new JarInputStream(new FileInputStream("your/jar/file.jar")); JarEntry obj = null while ((obj = is.getNextJarEntry()) != null) { JarEntry entry = (JarEntry)obj; if (entry.getName().equals("file.abc")) { ByteArrayOutputStream baos = new ByetArrayOutputStream(); IOUtils.copy(jarFile.getInputStream(entry), baos); String contents = new String(baos.toByteArray(), "utf-8"); // your entry is now read into contents } }