How do I extract war file under Linux Red Hat Enterprise server 5.0?
 

I am using a Red Hat enterprise server 5.0

I would like to know if there is a way to extract a single file from inside a war file and display its contents on the screen?

For example:
I have a file labeled test.war and inside this war there are multiple files/directories. I am interested in seeing the contents of one file labeled MANIFEST.MF without having to unzip the entire war file. does it make sense?

If my memory serves me well tonite, a war file is a web archive file for deploying servlets. Try going to http://java.sun.com/j2ee/tutorial/1_...mponents3.htmlfor help with that.

Try jar xvf file_name.war. I know of a way to do it in Eclipse or a Java program; not sure about doing it on the fly.

I think you can use the 'u' switch to jar

ie To extract the single file apssession.jar...

jar uxvf app.war WEB-INF/lib/appsession.jar

Jars/Wars are usually stored as a ZIP compressed file.

This works for me to extract the contents of a file to stdout:
unzip -c whatever.war META-INF/MANIFEST.MF

See man unzip for more options.

Thanks everyone for your feedback.

I used the unzip option and it did the trick.

Usage: unzip [-Z] [-opts[modifiers]] file[.zip][list] [-x xlist] [-d exdir]
Default action is to extract files in list, except those in xlist, to exdir;
file[.zip] may be a wildcard. -Z => ZipInfo mode ("unzip -Z" for usage).

-p extract files to pipe, no messages -l list files (short format)
-f freshen existing files, create none -t test compressed archive data
-u update files, create if necessary -z display archive comment
-x exclude files that follow (in xlist) -d extract files into exdir

modifiers: -q quiet mode (-qq => quieter)
-n never overwrite existing files -a auto-convert any text files
-o overwrite files WITHOUT prompting -aa treat ALL files as text
-j junk paths (do not make directories) -v be verbose/print version info
-C match filenames case-insensitively -L make (some) names lowercase
-X restore UID/GID info -V retain VMS version numbers
-K keep setuid/setgid/tacky permissions -M pipe through "more" pager
Examples (see unzip.txt for more info):
unzip data1 -x joe => extract all files except joe from zipfile data1.zip
unzip -p foo | more => send contents of foo.zip via pipe into program more
unzip -fo foo ReadMe => quietly replace existing ReadMe if archive file newer