How to get the path of a running JAR file?

Answer 1

Actually here is a better version - the old one failed if a folder name had a space in it.

  private String getJarFolder() {
    // get name and path
    String name = getClass().getName().replace('.', '/');
    name = getClass().getResource("/" + name + ".class").toString();
    // remove junk
    name = name.substring(0, name.indexOf(".jar"));
    name = name.substring(name.lastIndexOf(':')-1, name.lastIndexOf('/')+1).replace('%', ' ');
    // remove escape characters
    String s = "";
    for (int k=0; k<name.length(); k++) {
      s += name.charAt(k);
      if (name.charAt(k) == ' ') k += 2;
    }
    // replace '/' with system separator char
    return s.replace('/', File.separatorChar);
  }

As for failing with applets, you wouldn't usually have access to local files anyway. I don't know much about JWS but to handle local files might it not be possible to download the app.?

Answer 2

I'm surprised to see that none recently proposed to use Path. Here follows a citation: "The Path class includes various methods that can be used to obtain information about the path, access elements of the path, convert the path to other forms, or extract portions of a path"

Thus, a good alternative is to get the Path objest as:

Path path = Paths.get(Test.class.getProtectionDomain().getCodeSource().getLocation().toURI());

Answer 3

Something that is frustrating is that when you are developing in Eclipse MyClass.class.getProtectionDomain().getCodeSource().getLocation() returns the /bin directory which is great, but when you compile it to a jar, the path includes the /myjarname.jar part which gives you illegal file names.

To have the code work both in the ide and once it is compiled to a jar, I use the following piece of code:

URL applicationRootPathURL = getClass().getProtectionDomain().getCodeSource().getLocation();
File applicationRootPath = new File(applicationRootPathURL.getPath());
File myFile;
if(applicationRootPath.isDirectory()){
    myFile = new File(applicationRootPath, "filename");
}
else{
    myFile = new File(applicationRootPath.getParentFile(), "filename");
}

Answer 4

The getProtectionDomain approach might not work sometimes e.g. when you have to find the jar for some of the core java classes (e.g in my case StringBuilder class within IBM JDK), however following works seamlessly:

public static void main(String[] args) {
    System.out.println(findSource(MyClass.class));
    // OR
    System.out.println(findSource(String.class));
}

public static String findSource(Class<?> clazz) {
    String resourceToSearch = '/' + clazz.getName().replace(".", "/") + ".class";
    java.net.URL location = clazz.getResource(resourceToSearch);
    String sourcePath = location.getPath();
    // Optional, Remove junk
    return sourcePath.replace("file:", "").replace("!" + resourceToSearch, "");
}

Answer 5

If you are really looking for a simple way to get the folder in which your JAR is located you should implement this format of the solution It is easier than what are you are going to find (it is hard to find and many solutions are no longer supported, many others provide the path of the file instead of the actual directory) and this is proven working on version 1.12.

new File(".").getCanonicalPath()

Gathering the Input from other answers this is a simple one too:

String localPath=new File(getClass().getProtectionDomain().getCodeSource().getLocation().toURI()).getParentFile().getPath()+"\\"; 

Both will return a String with this format:

"C:\Users\User\Desktop\Folder\"

In a simple and concise line.

Answer 6

This code worked for me:

private static String getJarPath() throws IOException, URISyntaxException {
    File f = new File(LicensingApp.class.getProtectionDomain().().getLocation().toURI());
    String jarPath = f.getCanonicalPath().toString();
    String jarDir = jarPath.substring( 0, jarPath.lastIndexOf( File.separator ));
    return jarDir;
  }