How to list the files inside a JAR file?

Question

CodeSource src = MyClass.class.getProtectionDomain().getCodeSource();
if (src != null) {
  URL jar = src.getLocation();
  ZipInputStream zip = new ZipInputStream(jar.openStream());
  while(true) {
    ZipEntry e = zip.getNextEntry();
    if (e == null)
      break;
    String name = e.getName();
    if (name.startsWith("path/to/your/dir/")) {
      /* Do something with this entry. */
      ...
    }
  }
} 
else {
  /* Fail... */
}

Note that in Java 7, you can create a FileSystem from the JAR (zip) file, and then use NIO's directory walking and filtering mechanisms to search through it. This would make it easier to write code that handles JARs and "exploded" directories.

Code that works for both IDE's and .jar files:

import java.io.*;
import java.net.*;
import java.nio.file.*;
import java.util.*;
import java.util.stream.*;

public class ResourceWalker {
    public static void main(String[] args) throws URISyntaxException, IOException {
        URI uri = ResourceWalker.class.getResource("/resources").toURI();
        Path myPath;
        if (uri.getScheme().equals("jar")) {
            FileSystem fileSystem = FileSystems.newFileSystem(uri, Collections.<String, Object>emptyMap());
            myPath = fileSystem.getPath("/resources");
        } else {
            myPath = Paths.get(uri);
        }
        Stream<Path> walk = Files.walk(myPath, 1);
        for (Iterator<Path> it = walk.iterator(); it.hasNext();){
            System.out.println(it.next());
        }
    }
}

erickson's answer worked perfectly:

Here's the working code.

CodeSource src = MyClass.class.getProtectionDomain().getCodeSource();
List<String> list = new ArrayList<String>();

if( src != null ) {
    URL jar = src.getLocation();
    ZipInputStream zip = new ZipInputStream( jar.openStream());
    ZipEntry ze = null;

    while( ( ze = zip.getNextEntry() ) != null ) {
        String entryName = ze.getName();
        if( entryName.startsWith("images") &&  entryName.endsWith(".png") ) {
            list.add( entryName  );
        }
    }

 }
 webimages = list.toArray( new String[ list.size() ] );

And I have just modify my load method from this:

File[] webimages = ... 
BufferedImage image = ImageIO.read(this.getClass().getResource(webimages[nextIndex].getName() ));

To this:

String  [] webimages = ...

BufferedImage image = ImageIO.read(this.getClass().getResource(webimages[nextIndex]));

I would like to expand on acheron55's answer, since it is a very non-safe solution, for several reasons:

1. It doesn't close the FileSystem object.
2. It doesn't check if the FileSystem object already exists.
3. It isn't thread-safe.

This is somewhat a safer solution:

private static ConcurrentMap<String, Object> locks = new ConcurrentHashMap<>();

public void walk(String path) throws Exception {

    URI uri = getClass().getResource(path).toURI();
    if ("jar".equals(uri.getScheme()) {
        safeWalkJar(path, uri);
    } else {
        Files.walk(Paths.get(path));
    }
}

private void safeWalkJar(String path, URI uri) throws Exception {

    synchronized (getLock(uri)) {    
        // this'll close the FileSystem object at the end
        try (FileSystem fs = getFileSystem(uri)) {
            Files.walk(fs.getPath(path));
        }
    }
}

private Object getLock(URI uri) {

    String fileName = parseFileName(uri);  
    locks.computeIfAbsent(fileName, s -> new Object());
    return locks.get(fileName);
}

private String parseFileName(URI uri) {

    String schemeSpecificPart = uri.getSchemeSpecificPart();
    return schemeSpecificPart.substring(0, schemeSpecificPart.indexOf("!"));
}

private FileSystem getFileSystem(URI uri) throws IOException {

    try {
        return FileSystems.getFileSystem(uri);
    } catch (FileSystemNotFoundException e) {
        return FileSystems.newFileSystem(uri, Collections.<String, String>emptyMap());
    }
}   

There's no real need to synchronize over the file name; one could simply synchronize on the same object every time (or make the method synchronized), it's purely an optimization.

I would say that this is still a problematic solution, since there might be other parts in the code that use the FileSystem interface over the same files, and it could interfere with them (even in a single threaded application).
Also, it doesn't check for nulls (for instance, on getClass().getResource().

This particular Java NIO interface is kind of horrible, since it introduces a global/singleton non thread-safe resource, and its documentation is extremely vague (a lot of unknowns due to provider specific implementations). Results may vary for other FileSystem providers (not JAR). Maybe there's a good reason for it being that way; I don't know, I haven't researched the implementations.

So I guess my main problem would be, how to know the name of the jar where my main class lives.

Assuming that your project is packed in a Jar (not necessarily true!), you can use ClassLoader.getResource() or findResource() with the class name (followed by .class) to get the jar that contains a given class. You'll have to parse the jar name from the URL that gets returned (not that tough), which I will leave as an exercise for the reader :-)

Be sure to test for the case where the class is not part of a jar.