How to extract .war files in java? ZIP vs JAR

java jar zip war
user972276 picture user972276 · Oct 25, 2011 · Viewed 263.3k times · Source

I have a web program where I want the user to be able to import a .war file and I can extract certain files out of the .war file. I have found two class libraries: java.util.zip.* and java.util.jar.*. From what I understand, a WAR file is a special JAR file which is a special ZIP file. So would it be better to use java.util.jar? If ZIP and JAR files are pretty much the same why is there a need for two different libraries?

Answer

iltaf khalid picture iltaf khalid · Jan 29, 2013

WAR file is just a JAR file, to extract it, just issue following jar command – 

jar -xvf yourWARfileName.war

If the jar command is not found, which sometimes happens in the Windows command prompt, then specify full path i.e. in my case it is,

 c:\java\jdk-1.7.0\bin\jar -xvf my-file.war

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