Jar Browser

Introduction

The Jar Browser is a simple Swing app for browsing a set of jar files.

Jar Browser is great for:

• Figuring out what jar class X lives in
• Finding duplicate classes in separate jars
• Seeing the contents of the CLASSPATH
• Browsing code by decompiling classes from jars on the fly

Features

• Browse all the jars from a directory tree, or from the CLASSPATH
• Search for classes by name across a set of jars
• Decompile classes from within a jar
• Search for text within decompiled class listing

Future Enhancements

• "Class Tree" listing which shows all classes from a set of jars organized by package
• Additional file viewers: java source, image files
• Recursive handling of embedded jars and zips. This would be good for J2EE packages like WARs and EARs.
• "Save listing to file"
• Hypertext jump from one source listing to another

Releases

Version 1.0 just released supporting in place class decompilation.

Download the latest release here.

Instructions

Download jarbrowser.jar. It is an executable jar file, so just run:

    java -jar jarbrowser.jar

You should probably use jdk 1.3 or later. I developed with 1.4.0.

At the top, enter or browse to a root directory containing your jar files.
Now press the Scan button. The Jar Catalog tab shows the list of
jars found in the selected directory tree.

Click the CLASSPATH tab to show the jars on the CLASSPATH variable
when you ran Jar Browser. Note that you could call Jar Browser from
your own program just by calling its Main function.

To search for a class:

    Type the name of the class, or some part of it, into the Search box and press Enter.

To decompile a class:

    You must have the jad.exe executable on your system PATH. Just double-click on
    a .class file and a new tab will be opened with the java source. You can do a text
    search using the Search box on that tab.

Credits

Jar Browser was created by Scott Persinger.

Thanks to the following for supporting this project:

GoFish.com

BuyMaca.net

Real-force