I'm running a jar file in various locations and I'm trying to figure out how to get the location of the jar file that is running.
5 Answers
Not a perfect solution but this will return class code base’s location:
getClass().getProtectionDomain().getCodeSource().getLocation() answered May 14, 2010 at 20:11
Robben_Ford_Fan_boy
8,80612 gold badges67 silver badges91 bronze badges
9 Comments
BalusC
Not perfect? This is actually the most reliable since the other proposed suggestions returns the current working directory which is not per se the folder where the JAR is located. E.g. if you do
cd /somefolder and then java -jar /otherfolder/file.jar then other suggestions would return /somefolder. +1.
aioobe
So this solution will actually return
/otherfolder?
erickson
It isn't always possible to determine the location of the enclosing JAR (class loaders can use anything for storage, not just a file system), but when it is, this is the way to do it.
stacker
+1 I twiddled too long with my IDE
GorillaApe
for me it returns including program.jar name
|
As noted in the comments, this is not a direct answer to the question, but may actually be what many people are looking for (the current directory of the executing code):
new File(".").getAbsolutePath() 
2 Comments
aioobe
As @Will Hartung said, "The current directory may well have nothing to do with where the executing jar is located."
Here is my method to get execution path from anywhere
private static String GetExecutionPath(){ String absolutePath = getClass().getProtectionDomain().getCodeSource().getLocation().getPath(); absolutePath = absolutePath.substring(0, absolutePath.lastIndexOf("/")); absolutePath = absolutePath.replaceAll("%20"," "); // Surely need to do this here return absolutePath; } 
2 Comments
Mauro Midolo
you can use URLDecoder.decode(directoryPath, "UTF-8"); to replace %20 with space
Mauro Midolo
also you can use absolutePath.lastIndexOf(File.separator) to support all operating system
Consider the following function
//This method will work on Windows and Linux as well. public String getPath(){ URL rootPath = getClass().getResource(""); String URI=rootPath.toString().substring(9); String[] currentPath=URI.split("myjar.jar!"); currentPath[0]=currentPath[0].replaceAll("%20"," "); return currentPath[0]; } 
Comments
This seems like an iffy question to start out with.
If I am running code in Java, it is running out of rt.jar and probably a dozen other jars.
The very first files to run will actually be in rt.jar, rt.jar it calls your main.
If you write a class that allows you to tell what jar you are running and that class gets moved into a different jar, then you are not "running out of" the jar that contained your main any more.
I think what you want is the command line that started your application, but if you CD'd to the directory first, then it might not have the full path to your jar.
Also, you may not be running from a jar--someone could have expanded your jar into classes in a directory and is running it that way.
Personally I'd just wrap your program in a shell script launcher where you could look at your current location and the location of the jar file and then pass them into java.
1 Comment
darrickc
Good point, our application is wrapped in one huge jar (unfortunately).
String path = new File(".").getCanonicalPath().toString();