Java jar files are the same format as zip files - so if you have a zip file utility that would let you modify an archive, you have your foot in the door. Second problem is, if you want to recompile a class or something, you probably will just have to re-build the jar; but a text file or something (xml, for instance) should be easily enough modified.
To expand on what dfa said, the reason is because the jar file is set up like a zip file. If you want to modify the file, you must read out all of the entries, modify the one you want to change, and then write the entries back into the jar file. I have had to do this before, and that was the only way I could find to do it.
EDIT
Note that this is using the internal to Java jar file editors, which are file streams. I am sure there is a way to do it, you could read the entire jar into memory, modify everything, then write back out to a file stream. That is what I believe utilities like 7-Zip and others are doing, as I believe the ToC of a zip header has to be defined at write time. However, I could be wrong.
This may be more work than you're looking to deal with in the short term, but I suspect in the long term it would be very beneficial for you to look into using Ant (or Maven, or even Bazel) instead of building jar's manually. That way you can just click on the ant file (if you use Eclipse) and rebuild the jar.
Alternatively, you may want to actually not have these config files in the jar at all - if you're expecting to need to replace these files regularly, or if it's supposed to be distributed to multiple parties, the config file should not be part of the jar at all.
As many have said, you can't change a file in a JAR without recanning the JAR. It's even worse with Launch4J, you have to rebuild the EXE once you change the JAR. So don't go this route.
It's generally bad idea to put configuration files in the JAR. Here is my suggestion. Search for your configuration file in some pre-determined locations (like home directory, \Program Files\ etc). If you find a configuration file, use it. Otherwise, use the one in the JAR as fallback. If you do this, you just need to write the configuration file in the pre-determined location and the program will pick it up.
Another benefit of this approach is that the modified configuration file doesn't get overwritten if you upgrade your software.
Yes you can, using SQLite you can read from or write to a database from within the jar file, so that you won't have to extract and then re jar it, follow my post http://shoaibinamdar.in/blog/?p=313
using the syntax "jdbc:sqlite::resource:" you would be able to read and write to a database from within the jar file
It does exactly what you want (to edit files inline inside a jar file), through a virtual file system API. It also supports nested archives (jar inside a jar) as well.
I have similar issue where I need to modify/update a xml file inside a jar file.
The jar file is created by a Spring-boot application and the location of the file is BOOT-INF/classes/properties
I was referring this document and trying to replace/update the file with this command:
jar uf myapp.jar BOOT-INF/classes/properties/test.xml
But with this, it wont change the file at the given location. I tried all the options also but wont work.
Note: The command I am executing from the location where jar file is present.
The solution I found is:
From the current location of jar file, I created folders BOOT-INF/classes/properties
Copy the test.xml file into the location BOOT-INF/classes/properties.
Run the same command again. jar uf myapp.jar BOOT-INF/classes/properties/test.xml
The xml file has been changed in the jar file.
Basically you need to create a folder structure like where the file is located into the jar file. Copy the file at that location and then execute the command.
The problem with the documentation is that, it does not have enough examples as well as explanation around common scenarios.