How to extract .war files in java? ZIP vs JAR
Solution 1:
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
Solution 2:
If you look at the JarFile API you'll see that it's a subclass of the ZipFile class.
The jar-specific classes mostly just add jar-specific functionality, like direct support for manifest file attributes and so on.
It's OOP "in action"; since jar files are zip files, the jar classes can use zip functionality and provide additional utility.