Unable to find velocity template resources

Great question - I solved my issue today as follows using Ecilpse:

1. Put your template in the same folder hierarchy as your source code (not in a separate folder hierarchy even if you include it in the build path) as below:

2. In your code simply use the following lines of code (assuming you just want the date to be passed as data):

   VelocityEngine ve = new VelocityEngine();
   ve.setProperty(RuntimeConstants.RESOURCE_LOADER, "classpath");
   ve.setProperty("classpath.resource.loader.class", ClasspathResourceLoader.class.getName());
   ve.init();
   VelocityContext context = new VelocityContext();
   context.put("date", getMyTimestampFunction());
   Template t = ve.getTemplate( "templates/email_html_new.vm" );
   StringWriter writer = new StringWriter();
   t.merge( context, writer );
   

See how first we tell VelocityEngine to look in the classpath. Without this it wouldn't know where to look.