Subject: How to open (extract) a WAR file ?
Author: Alex_Raj
Posted on: 01/29/2009 06:52:47 PM
In computing, a WAR file (which stands for "web application archive" [1]) is a JAR file used to distribute a collection of JavaServer Pages, servlets, Java classes, XML files, tag libraries and static Web pages (HTML and related files) that together constitute a Web application.
Essentially, WAR files build on the ZIP file format. So there are plenty of ways to open those files to read the content. One way would be to use any tool that you use to open/extract a .zip file. Computer users may prefer to extract WAR files using the jar command that comes with the JDK.
Usage: jar {ctxu}[vfm0Mi] [jar-file] [manifest-file] [-C dir] files ...
Options:
-c create new archive
-t list table of contents for archive
-x extract named (or all) files from archive
-u update existing archive
-v generate verbose output on standard output
-f specify archive file name
-m include manifest information from specified manifest file
-0 store only; use no ZIP compression
-M do not create a manifest file for the entries
-i generate index information for the specified jar files
-C change to the specified directory and include the following file
If any file is a directory then it is processed recursively.
The manifest file name and the archive file name needs to be specified
in the same order the 'm' and 'f' flags are specified.
Example 1: to archive two class files into an archive called classes.jar:
jar cvf classes.jar Foo.class Bar.class
Example 2: use an existing manifest file 'mymanifest' and archive all the
files in the foo/ directory into 'classes.jar':
jar cvfm classes.jar mymanifest -C foo/ .
JAR (command) utility in Java can be used to open/extract these files as follows. Run following command from the folder where you need the content to be extracted by providing the path to the archive.
So, the following command will extract all files from myWebApp.war to current directory
jar xvf myWebApp.war
References:
