How to unpackage and repackage a WAR file

Question

I have a WAR file. I would like to open it, edit an XML file, remove some jars and then re-package it.

I used WINRAR to open the WAR file and I removed some Jars and

Answer 1

Adapting from the above answers, this works for Tomcat, but can be adapted for JBoss as well or any container:

sudo -u tomcat /opt/tomcat/bin/shutdown.sh
cd /opt/tomcat/webapps
sudo mkdir tmp; cd tmp
sudo jar -xvf ../myapp.war
#make edits...
sudo vi WEB-INF/classes/templates/fragments/header.html
sudo vi WEB-INF/classes/application.properties
#end of making edits
sudo jar -cvf myapp0.0.1.war *
sudo cp myapp0.0.1.war ..
cd ..
sudo chown tomcat:tomcat myapp0.0.1.war
sudo rm -rf tmp
sudo -u tomcat /opt/tomcat/bin/startup.sh