What is a .WAR file?
A WAR packages a Java web application for a server like Tomcat.
- Did you know
- A WAR holds everything a Java web app needs to deploy to a server.
- A WAR follows a fixed layout with a WEB-INF directory whose web.xml deployment descriptor tells the server what to run.
- The structure is laid down by the Java Servlet specification, so any compliant container such as Tomcat can deploy it.
- Under the hood a .WAR file is really a ZIP archive - rename it to .zip and you can browse the files inside.
- What Analyser reads
- Identify and read developer and data-serialisation files: dependency lockfiles (npm/Yarn/pnpm/Cargo/Poetry/Bundler/Composer - locked-package count), binary serialisations (MessagePack, CBOR, BSON, raw Protobuf messages and descriptor sets), Python pickles with a security note, NumPy .npz and Java jar/war/ear archives, IDL schemas (FlatBuffers/Thrift/Cap n Proto/HCL), MATLAB MAT-files, Redis RDB dumps and columnar big-data containers (Apache Arrow/Feather, Parquet, ORC). The JSON supersets JSON5/JSONC/Hjson now open in a full viewer - see Notebooks & data above.
- Depth of analysis
- .WAR is an identification-grade format: Analyser recognises it from its bytes and decodes the header metadata it carries, rather than opening it in a full viewer. Formats that do get a full viewer are marked "Full" on the formats page.
- Open a .WAR file
- Drag a .WAR file onto the Analyser home page (or tap to pick one). It is identified entirely in your browser - nothing is uploaded, there is no account, and it works offline once installed.