public static Properties loadProperties(String resourceName,
    boolean failIfNotFound) throws IOException 
{
        Properties properties = null;
        InputStream is = null;
        try
        {
            is = loadResource( resourceName );
            if( is != null )
            {
                properties = new Properties();
                properties.load( is );
            }
            else
            {
                if( failIfNotFound )
                {
                    throw new IOException( "Error: could not find resource '" + resourceName + "' on classpath." );
                }
            }
        }
        finally
        {
            if( is != null )
            {
                is.close();
            }
        }
        return properties;
}

This will attempt to load the resource given the resource name.

 public static Properties loadProperties(String resourceName,
    Properties defaults) throws IOException 
{
        InputStream is = null;
        try
        {
            is = loadResource( resourceName );
            if( is != null )
            {
                defaults.load( is );
            }
        }
        finally
        {
            if( is != null )
            {
                is.close();
            }
        }
        return defaults;
}

This will attempt to load the resource given the resource name.

 public static InputStream loadResource(String resourceName) throws IOException 
{
        ClassLoader loader = ResourceLoader.class.getClassLoader();
        InputStream is = null;
        if( loader != null )
        {
            is = loader.getResourceAsStream( resourceName );
        }
        //see sourceforge bug 863053, this is a fix for a user that
        //needed to have PDFBox loaded by the bootstrap classloader
        if( is == null )
        {
            loader = ClassLoader.getSystemClassLoader();
            if( loader != null )
            {
                is = loader.getResourceAsStream( resourceName );
            }
        }
        if( is == null )
        {
            File f = new File( resourceName );
            if( f.exists() )
            {
                is = new FileInputStream( f );
            }
        }
        return is;
}

This will attempt to load the resource given the resource name.