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 did an 'Add to Archive' in WinRar and created a WAR.

When I deployed the WAR in jboss folder, I got an exception.

   16:05:14,316 ERROR [org.jboss.msc.service.fail] (MSC service thread 1-2) 
   MSC00001: Failed to start service jboss.deployment.unit."myapplication.war".
   STRUCTURE: org.jboss.msc.service.StartException in 
   service   jboss.deployment.unit."myapplication.war".STRUCTURE: 
   Failed to process phase STRUCTURE of deployment "myapplication.war"

How do I repackage the WAR ?

Answer 1

you can update your war from the command line using java commands as mentioned here:

jar -uvf test.war yourclassesdir 

Other useful commands:

Command to unzip/explode the war file

jar -xvf test.war

Command to create the war file

jar -cvf test.war yourclassesdir 

Eg:

jar -cvf test.war *
jar -cvf test.war WEB-INF META-INF

Answer 2

copy your war file to /tmp now extract the contents:

cp warfile.war /tmp
cd /tmp
unzip warfile.war
cd WEB-INF
nano web.xml (or vim or any editor you want to use)
cd ..
zip -r -u warfile.war WEB-INF

now you have in /tmp/warfile.war your file updated.

Answer 3

This worked for me:

mv xyz.war ./tmp
cd tmp
jar -xvf xyz.war
rm -rf WEB-INF/lib/zookeeper-3.4.10.jar
rm -rf xyz.war
jar -cvf xyz.war *
mv xyz.war ../
cd ..