How to replace file inside an Axis2 generated AAR file?

Question

I'm tweaking a file that eventually ends up inside my aar axis2 web services file. I don't want to have to build the whole aar each time I make a change, is there an easy way to replace items within the aar file?

Answer 1

An Axis2 AAR file is just a JAR (in the same way as a WAR file is a JAR), and a JAR is basically a ZIP file. Therefore there are plenty of tools to do that. It depends on what you want (GUI or command line) and on the OS you are using.

Answer 2

For your Axis2 to work, you don't need an aar file.

services.xml file can be either of the below locations for the Axis2 to work.

repository/services/SimpleService/meta-inf/services.xml WEB-INF/services/SimpleService/meta-inf/services.xml

This will help us have an extra step of generating the aar file.

ServiceDeployer.java

 * <p>
 * Standard Axis2 service Deployer which use services.xml file to build
 * services. ServiceDeployer can be used with Axis2 archive (.aar) or exploded
 * directory structure. Some of the example formats given below.
 * </p>
 * <p>Examples : <p>
 *        <ul>
 *          <li>repository/services/SimpleService.aar/meta-inf/services.xml</li>
 *          <li>repository/services/SimpleService/meta-inf/services.xml</li>
 *          <li>WEB-INF/services/SimpleService.aar/meta-inf/services.xml</li>
 *          <li>WEB-INF/services/SimpleService/meta-inf/services.xml</li>
 *       </ul>
 
     InputStream servicexmlStream = serviceClassLoader
            .getResourceAsStream("META-INF/services.xml");
    if (servicexmlStream == null) {
        servicexmlStream = serviceClassLoader.getResourceAsStream("meta-inf/services.xml");
    } else {
        metainf = "META-INF";
    }

https://axis.apache.org/axis2/java/core/apidocs/org/apache/axis2/deployment/ServiceDeployer.html