How to read my META-INF/MANIFEST.MF file in a Spring Boot app?

Question

I\'m trying to read my META-INF/MANIFEST.MF file from my Spring Boot web app (contained in a jar file).

I\'m trying the following code:

        Input         


        

Answer 1

Pretty much all jar files come with a manifest file, so your code is returning the first file it can find in the classpath.

Why would you want the manifest anyway? It's a file used by Java. Put any custom values you need somewhere else, like in a .properties file next to you .class file.

Update 2

As mentioned in a comment below, not in the question, the real goal is the version information from the manifest. Java already supplies that information with the java.lang.Package class.

Don't try to read the manifest yourself, even if you could find it.

Update 1

Note that the manifest file is not a Properties file. It's structure is much more complex than that.

See the example in the java documentation of the JAR File Specification.

Manifest-Version: 1.0
Created-By: 1.7.0 (Sun Microsystems Inc.)

Name: common/class1.class
SHA-256-Digest: (base64 representation of SHA-256 digest)

Name: common/class2.class
SHA1-Digest: (base64 representation of SHA1 digest)
SHA-256-Digest: (base64 representation of SHA-256 digest)

As you can see, Name and SHA-256-Digest occurs more than once. The Properties class cannot handle that, since it's just a Map and the keys have to be unique.