Executing or Extracting files from JAR

Question

Hello all,
I've written a small application that needs to be able to launch a help file (in the form *.chm*) from a menu bar. My question/problem is one of efficiency. In order to execute the *.chm* booklet I've written code that gets the files from within the JAR as an InputStream and writes it to a directory so it can be displayed. In order for the booklet to launch properly I have to write about 12 files (stylesheets and supporting scripts) to a directory; tedious and wasteful it seems. Since a JAR file is essentially a ZIP file, shouldn't I be able to extract the files to a directory without reading and writing each file individually? Can anyone direct/show me another method of doing this? Can I launch the files from within the JAR itself? The code I am using is as follows...
InputStream helpContent=this.getClass().getResourceAsStream("appContent.chm");
BufferedReader reader=new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(helpContent));
     try{
          BufferedWriter writer=new BufferedWriter(new FileWriter("helpContent.chm"));
          while(true){
               if(!reader.ready()){
                    break;
               writer.write(reader.readLine());
          writer.flush();
          writer.close();
          reader.close();
                }This snippet of code would inevitably be run/looped for each file necessary to achieve proper output.

Answer 1

The extraction is working properly now. I'm implementing code based on veldhanas suggests; thank you very much Veldhanas. At first the code was throwing a FileNotFoundException on the MANIFEST file. I found that it's because while cycling through as an enumeration it wasn't picking up on the fact that the MANIFEST lies in a subdirectory of the jar itself "META-INF. To solve this problem I create the subdirectory myself via
{code}
          File metaDir=new File("./META-INF");
          metaDir.mkdir();
{code}
The code I'm implementing is as follows...
{code}
          int jarReturnValue=jarChooser.showOpenDialog(null);
          if(jarReturnValue==JFileChooser.APPROVE_OPTION){
                    //get the selected file from chooser
               jarFile=jarChooser.getSelectedFile();
                    //display the file location
               System.out.println(jarFile.toString());
               File metaDir=new File("./META-INF");
               metaDir.mkdir();
               try{
                         //new instance of a jarfile object
                    jar=new JarFile(jarFile);
                    e=jar.entries();     //store the entries within an enumeration
                         //cycle through the jarfile elements as "Enum"
                    while(e.hasMoreElements()){
                         JarEntry innerFile=(JarEntry)e.nextElement();
                         System.out.println(innerFile.toString());
                         File outputFile=new File(destDir+File.separator+innerFile.toString());
                         System.out.println(outputFile.toString());
                              //if the inner which at current iteration is dir, make dir
                         if(innerFile.isDirectory()){
                              outputFile.mkdir();
                              continue;
                              //inputstream is the file within the zip/jar to read from
                         inputStream=jar.getInputStream(innerFile);
                              //fileoutput stream is the file to create outside of the jar
                         fileOutputStream=new FileOutputStream(outputFile);
                              //while there is information to be read
                         while(inputStream.available()>0){
                                   //write the contents of the inner file to the outter file
                              fileOutputStream.write(inputStream.read());
                         fileOutputStream.flush();
                         fileOutputStream.close();
                         inputStream.close();
               }catch(Exception ex){
                    ex.printStackTrace();
{code}
*PROBLEM SOLVED*: Thank you to everyone that invested time in this post and shared some useful knowledge. Your help has been very much appreciated!
Edited by: GooBeR81u812 on Dec 15, 2008 6:17 AM