reading MANIFEST.MF file from jar file using JAVA

Question

Is there any way i can read the contents of a jar file. like i want to read the manifest file in order to find the creator of the jar file and version. Is there any way to a

Answer 1

Keep it simple. A JAR is also a ZIP so any ZIP code can be used to read the MAINFEST.MF:

public static String readManifest(String sourceJARFile) throws IOException
{
    ZipFile zipFile = new ZipFile(sourceJARFile);
    Enumeration entries = zipFile.entries();

    while (entries.hasMoreElements())
    {
        ZipEntry zipEntry = (ZipEntry) entries.nextElement();
        if (zipEntry.getName().equals("META-INF/MANIFEST.MF"))
        {
            return toString(zipFile.getInputStream(zipEntry));
        }
    }

    throw new IllegalStateException("Manifest not found");
}

private static String toString(InputStream inputStream) throws IOException
{
    StringBuilder stringBuilder = new StringBuilder();
    try (BufferedReader bufferedReader = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(inputStream)))
    {
        String line;
        while ((line = bufferedReader.readLine()) != null)
        {
            stringBuilder.append(line);
            stringBuilder.append(System.lineSeparator());
        }
    }

    return stringBuilder.toString().trim() + System.lineSeparator();
}

Despite the flexibility, for just reading data this answer is the best.