[java] How to convert AAR to JAR

As many other people have pointed out, just extracting the .jar from the .aar file doesn't quite cut it as resources may be missing.

Here are the steps that worked for me (context of Android, your mileage may vary if you have other purposes):

  1. Rename the .aar file to .zip and extract.
  2. The extracted folder is an ADT project that you can import in Eclipse with some minor modifications (see below)!
  3. In the extracted folder rename the contained file classes.jar to whatever you like (in this example myProjectLib.jar) and move it to the lib folder within the extracted folder.
  4. Now in order for Eclipse to accept it you need to put two files into the extracted folder root:
    • .project
    • .classpath
  5. To do that, create a new Android dummy project in Eclipse and copy over the files, or copy over from an existing Android project.
  6. Open the .project file and look for the XML name tag and replace the contents of it with myProjectLib (or whatever you called your jar file above) and save.
  7. Now in Eclipse you can File -> New -> Project -> Android Project from existing source.. and point to the extracted folder content.
  8. After import right click on the newly created project, select Properties -> Android, and check Is Library.
  9. In your main project that you want to use the library for, also go to Properties -> Android and add the newly added myProjectLib to the list of dependencies.