[java] Find a class somewhere inside dozens of JAR files?

How would you find a particular class name inside lots of jar files?

(Looking for the actual class name, not the classes that reference it.)

To add yet another tool... this is a very simple and useful tool for windows. A simple exe file you click on, give it a directory to search in, a class name and it will find the jar file that contains that class. Yes, it's recursive.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/jarfinder/

Use this.. you can find any file in classpath.. guaranteed..

import java.net.URL;
import java.net.URLClassLoader;
import java.util.zip.ZipEntry;
import java.util.zip.ZipInputStream;

public class FileFinder {

    public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {

        String file = <your file name>;

        ClassLoader cl = ClassLoader.getSystemClassLoader();

        URL[] urls = ((URLClassLoader)cl).getURLs();

        for(URL url: urls){
            listFiles(file, url);
        }
    }

    private static void listFiles(String file, URL url) throws Exception{
        ZipInputStream zip = new ZipInputStream(url.openStream());
          while(true) {
            ZipEntry e = zip.getNextEntry();
            if (e == null)
              break;
            String name = e.getName();
            if (name.endsWith(file)) {
                System.out.println(url.toString() + " -> " + name);
            }
          }
    }

}

You can find a class in a directory full of jars with a bit of shell:

Looking for class "FooBar":

LIB_DIR=/some/dir/full/of/jarfiles
for jarfile in $(find $LIBDIR -name "*.jar"); do
   echo "--------$jarfile---------------"
   jar -tvf $jarfile | grep FooBar
done

I didn't know of a utility to do it when I came across this problem, so I wrote the following:

public class Main {

    /**
     * 
     */
    private static String CLASS_FILE_TO_FIND =
            "class.to.find.Here";
    private static List<String> foundIn = new LinkedList<String>();

    /**
     * @param args the first argument is the path of the file to search in. The second may be the
     *        class file to find.
     */
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        if (!CLASS_FILE_TO_FIND.endsWith(".class")) {
            CLASS_FILE_TO_FIND = CLASS_FILE_TO_FIND.replace('.', '/') + ".class";
        }
        File start = new File(args[0]);
        if (args.length > 1) {
            CLASS_FILE_TO_FIND = args[1];
        }
        search(start);
        System.out.println("------RESULTS------");
        for (String s : foundIn) {
            System.out.println(s);
        }
    }

    private static void search(File start) {
        try {
            final FileFilter filter = new FileFilter() {

                public boolean accept(File pathname) {
                    return pathname.getName().endsWith(".jar") || pathname.isDirectory();
                }
            };
            for (File f : start.listFiles(filter)) {
                if (f.isDirectory()) {
                    search(f);
                } else {
                    searchJar(f);
                }
            }
        } catch (Exception e) {
            System.err.println("Error at: " + start.getPath() + " " + e.getMessage());
        }
    }

    private static void searchJar(File f) {
        try {
            System.out.println("Searching: " + f.getPath());
            JarFile jar = new JarFile(f);
            ZipEntry e = jar.getEntry(CLASS_FILE_TO_FIND);
            if (e == null) {
                e = jar.getJarEntry(CLASS_FILE_TO_FIND);
                if (e != null) {
                    foundIn.add(f.getPath());
                }
            } else {
                foundIn.add(f.getPath());
            }
        } catch (IOException e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        }
    }

}

#!/bin/bash

pattern=$1
shift

for jar in $(find $* -type f -name "*.jar")
do
  match=`jar -tvf $jar | grep $pattern`
  if [ ! -z "$match" ]
  then
    echo "Found in: $jar"
    echo "$match"
  fi
done

ClassFinder is a program that's designed to solve this problem. It allows you to search recursively through directories and jar files to find all instances of a class matching a pattern. It is written in Java, not python. It has a nice GUI which makes it easy to use. And it runs fast. This release is precompiled in a runnable jar so you don't have to build it from source.

Download it here: ClassFinder 1.0

Under a Linux environment you could do the following :

$ find <base_dir> -name *.jar -print0 | xargs -0 -l jar tf | grep <name>

Where name is the name of the class file that you are looking inside the jars distributed across the hierarchy of directories rooted at the base_dir.

You can use locate and grep:

locate jar | xargs grep 'my.class'

Make sure you run updatedb before using locate.

some time ago, I wrote a program just for that: https://github.com/javalite/jar-explorer

A bash script solution using unzip (zipinfo). Tested on Ubuntu 12.

#!/bin/bash

# ./jarwalker.sh "/a/Starting/Path" "aClassName"

IFS=$'\n'
jars=( $( find -P "$1" -type f -name "*.jar" ) )

for jar in ${jars[*]}
    do
        classes=( $( zipinfo -1 ${jar} | awk -F '/' '{print $NF}' | grep .class | awk -F '.' '{print $1}' ) )
        if [ ${#classes[*]} -ge 0 ]; then
            for class in ${classes[*]}
                do
                    if [ ${class} == "$2" ]; then
                        echo "Found in ${jar}"
                    fi
                done
        fi
    done

I've always used this on Windows and its worked exceptionally well.

findstr /s /m /c:"package/classname" *.jar, where

findstr.exe comes standard with Windows and the params:

• /s = recursively
• /m = print only the filename if there is a match
• /c = literal string (in this case your package name + class names separated by '/')

Hope this helps someone.

Following script will help you out

for file in *.jar
do
  # do something on "$file"
  echo "$file"
  /usr/local/jdk/bin/jar -tvf "$file" | grep '$CLASSNAME'
done

Grepj is a command line utility to search for classes within jar files. I am the author of the utility.

You can run the utility like grepj package.Class my1.jar my2.war my3.ear

Multiple jar, ear, war files can be provided. For advanced usage use find to provide a list of jars to be searched.

Not sure why scripts here have never really worked for me. This works:

#!/bin/bash
for i in *.jar; do jar -tf "$i" | grep $1 | xargs -I{} echo -e "$i : {}" ; done

If you have an instance of the class, or can get one, you have a pure java solution:

try{
    Class clazz = Class.forName("        try{
        Class clazz = Class.forName("class-name");
        String name = "/"+clazz.getName().replace('.', '/')+".class";
        URL url = clazz.getResource(name);
        String jar = url.toString().substring(10).replaceAll("!.*", "");
        System.out.println( jar );
    }catch(Exception err){
        err.printStackTrace();
    }

Of course, the first two line have to adapted according to where you have an instance of the class or the class name.

Check this Plugin for eclipse which can do the job you are looking for.

https://marketplace.eclipse.org/content/jarchiveexplorer

To find a class in a folder (and subfolders) bunch of JARs: https://jarscan.com/

Usage: java -jar jarscan.jar [-help | /?]
                    [-dir directory name]
                    [-zip]
                    [-showProgress]
                    <-files | -class | -package>
                    <search string 1> [search string 2]
                    [search string n]

Help:
  -help or /?           Displays this message.

  -dir                  The directory to start searching
                        from default is "."

  -zip                  Also search Zip files

  -showProgress         Show a running count of files read in

  -files or -class      Search for a file or Java class
                        contained in some library.
                        i.e. HttpServlet

  -package              Search for a Java package
                        contained in some library.
                        i.e. javax.servlet.http

  search string         The file or package to
                        search for.
                        i.e. see examples above

Example:

java -jar jarscan.jar -dir C:\Folder\To\Search -showProgress -class GenericServlet

grep -l "classname" *.jar

gives you the name of the jar

find . -name "*.jar" -exec jar -t -f {} \; | grep  "classname"

gives you the package of the class

Filename: searchForFiles.py

import os, zipfile, glob, sys

def main():
    searchFile = sys.argv[1] #class file to search for, sent from batch file below (optional, see second block of code below)
    listOfFilesInJar = []
    for file in glob.glob("*.jar"):
        archive = zipfile.ZipFile(file, 'r')
        for x in archive.namelist():
            if str(searchFile) in str(x):
                listOfFilesInJar.append(file)

    for something in listOfFilesInJar:
        print("location of "+str(searchFile)+": ",something)

if __name__ == "__main__":
    sys.exit(main())

You can easily run this by making a .bat file with the following text (replace "AddWorkflows.class" with the file you are searching for):

(File: CallSearchForFiles.bat)

@echo off
python -B -c "import searchForFiles;x=searchForFiles.main();" AddWorkflows.class
pause

You can double-click CallSearchForFiles.bat to run it, or call it from the command line "CallSearchForFiles.bat SearchFile.class"

Click to See Example Output

A bit late to the party, but nevertheless...

I've been using JarBrowser to find in which jar a particular class is present. It's got an easy to use GUI which allows you to browse through the contents of all the jars in the selected path.

user1207523's script works fine for me. Here is a variant that searches for jar files recusively using find instead of simple expansion;

#!/bin/bash
for i in `find . -name '*.jar'`; do jar -tf "$i" | grep $1 | xargs -I{} echo -e "$i : {}" ; done

In eclipse you can use the old but still usable plugin jarsearch

Script to find jar file: find_jar.sh

IFS=$(echo -en "\n\b") # Set the field separator newline

for f in `find ${1} -iname *.jar`; do
  jar -tf ${f}| grep --color $2
  if [ $? == 0 ]; then
    echo -n "Match found: "
    echo -e "${f}\n"
  fi
done
unset IFS

Usage: ./find_jar.sh < top-level directory containing jar files > < Class name to find>

This is similar to most answers given here. But it only outputs the file name, if grep finds something. If you want to suppress grep output you may redirect that to /dev/null but I prefer seeing the output of grep as well so that I can use partial class names and figure out the correct one from a list of output shown.

The class name can be both simple class name Like "String" or fully qualified name like "java.lang.String"

To locate jars that match a given string:

find . -name \*.jar -exec grep -l YOUR_CLASSNAME {} \;

One thing to add to all of the above: if you don't have the jar executable available (it comes with the JDK but not with the JRE), you can use unzip (or WinZip, or whatever) to accomplish the same thing.

Check JBoss Tattletale; although I've never used it personally, this seems to be the tool you need.

I found this new way

bash $ ls -1  | xargs -i -t jar -tvf '{}'| grep Abstract
jar -tvf activation-1.1.jar
jar -tvf antisamy-1.4.3.jar
  2263 Thu Jan 13 21:38:10 IST 2011 org/owasp/validator/html/scan/AbstractAntiSamyScanner.class
...

So this lists the jar and the class if found, if you want you can give ls -1 *.jar or input to xargs with find command HTH Someone.

There are also two different utilities called both "JarScan" that do exactly what you are asking for: JarScan (inetfeedback.com) and JarScan (java.net)

shameless self promotion, but you can try a utility I wrote : http://sourceforge.net/projects/zfind

It supports most common archive/compressed files (jar, zip, tar, tar.gz etc) and unlike many other jar/zip finders, supports nested zip files (zip within zip, jar within jar etc) till unlimited depth.

To search all jar files in a given directory for a particular class, you can do this:

ls *.jar | xargs grep -F MyClass

or, even simpler,

grep -F MyClass *.jar

Output looks like this:

Binary file foo.jar matches

It's very fast because the -F option means search for Fixed string, so it doesn't load the the regex engine for each grep invocation. If you need to, you can always omit the -F option and use regexes.

I know this is an old question but...
I had the same issue, so If someone is looking for a very simple solution for windows - there is a software named Locate32 Just put jar as file extension
And containing the class name
It finds the file within seconds.

Unix

On Linux, other Unix variants, Git Bash on Windows, or Cygwin, use the jar (or unzip -v), grep, and find commands.

The following lists all class files that match a given name:

for i in *.jar; do jar -tvf "$i" | grep -Hsi ClassName && echo "$i"; done

If you know the entire list of Java archives you want to search, you could place them all in the same directory using (symbolic) links.

Or use find (case sensitively) to find the JAR file that contains a given class name:

find path/to/libs -name '*.jar' -exec grep -Hls ClassName {} \;

For example, to find the name of the archive containing IdentityHashingStrategy:

$ find . -name '*.jar' -exec grep -Hsli IdentityHashingStrategy {} \;
./trove-3.0.3.jar

If the JAR could be anywhere in the system and the locate command is available:

for i in $(locate "*.jar");
  do echo "$i"; jar -tvf "$i" | grep -Hsi ClassName;
done

A syntax variation:

find path/to/libs -name '*.jar' -print | \
  while read i; do jar -tvf "$i" | grep -Hsi ClassName && echo "$i"; done 

Windows

Open a command prompt, change to the directory (or ancestor directory) containing the JAR files, then:

for /R %G in (*.jar) do @jar -tvf "%G" | find "ClassName" > NUL && echo %G

Here's how it works:

1. for /R %G in (*.jar) do - loop over all JAR files, recursively traversing directories; store the file name in %G.
2. @jar -tvf "%G" | - run the Java Archive command to list all file names within the given archive, and write the results to standard output; the @ symbol suppresses printing the command's invocation.
3. find "ClassName" > NUL - search standard input, piped from the output of the jar command, for the given class name; this will set ERRORLEVEL to 1 iff there's a match (otherwise 0).
4. && echo %G - iff ERRORLEVEL is non-zero, write the Java archive file name to standard output (the console).

Web

Use a search engine that scans JAR files.

Just use FindClassInJars util, it's a simple swing program, but useful. You can check source code or download jar file at http://code.google.com/p/find-class-in-jars/

This one works well in MinGW ( windows bash environment ) ~ gitbash

Put this function into your .bashrc file in your HOME directory:

# this function helps you to find a jar file for the class
function find_jar_of_class() {
  OLD_IFS=$IFS
  IFS=$'\n'
  jars=( $( find -type f -name "*.jar" ) )
  for i in ${jars[*]} ; do 
    if [ ! -z "$(jar -tvf "$i" | grep -Hsi $1)" ] ; then
      echo "$i"
    fi
   done 
  IFS=$OLD_IFS
}