How to get the path of a running JAR file?

return new File(MyClass.class.getProtectionDomain().getCodeSource().getLocation()
    .toURI()).getPath();

Replace "MyClass" with the name of your class.

Obviously, this will do odd things if your class was loaded from a non-file location.

Use ClassLoader.getResource() to find the URL for your current class.

For example:

package foo;

public class Test
{
    public static void main(String[] args)
    {
        ClassLoader loader = Test.class.getClassLoader();
        System.out.println(loader.getResource("foo/Test.class"));
    }
}

(This example taken from a similar question.)

To find the directory, you'd then need to take apart the URL manually. See the JarClassLoader tutorial for the format of a jar URL.

If you are really looking for a simple way to get the folder in which your JAR is located you should use this implementation. Solutions like this are hard to find and many solutions are no longer supported, many others provide the path of the file instead of the actual directory. This is easier than other solutions you are going to find and works for java version 1.12.

new File(".").getCanonicalPath()

Gathering the Input from other answers this is a simple one too:

String localPath=new File(getClass().getProtectionDomain().getCodeSource().getLocation().toURI()).getParentFile().getPath()+"\\"; 

Both will return a String with this format:

"C:\Users\User\Desktop\Folder\"

In a simple and concise line.

Here's upgrade to other comments, that seem to me incomplete for the specifics of

using a relative "folder" outside .jar file (in the jar's same location):

String path = 
  YourMainClassName.class.getProtectionDomain().
  getCodeSource().getLocation().getPath();

path = 
  URLDecoder.decode(
    path, 
    "UTF-8");

BufferedImage img = 
  ImageIO.read(
    new File((
        new File(path).getParentFile().getPath()) +  
        File.separator + 
        "folder" + 
        File.separator + 
        "yourfile.jpg"));

For the jar file path:

String jarPath = File(MyClass.class.getProtectionDomain().getCodeSource().getLocation()
    .toURI()).getPath();

For getting the directory path of that jar file:

String dirPath = new File(MyClass.class.getProtectionDomain().getCodeSource().getLocation()
                        .toURI()).getParent();

The results of the two lines above are like this:

/home/user/MyPrograms/myapp/myjar.jar (for the jar path)

/home/user/MyPrograms/myapp (for the directory path)

Try this:

String path = new File("").getAbsolutePath();

This code worked for me to identify if the program is being executed inside a JAR file or IDE:

private static boolean isRunningOverJar() {
    try {
        String pathJar = Application.class.getResource(Application.class.getSimpleName() + ".class").getFile();

        if (pathJar.toLowerCase().contains(".jar")) {
            return true;
        } else {
            return false;
        }
    } catch (Exception e) {
        return false;
    }
}

If I need to get the Windows full path of JAR file I am using this method:

    private static String getPathJar() {
        try {
            final URI jarUriPath =
                    Application.class.getResource(Application.class.getSimpleName() + ".class").toURI();
            String jarStringPath = jarUriPath.toString().replace("jar:", "");
            String jarCleanPath  = Paths.get(new URI(jarStringPath)).toString();

            if (jarCleanPath.toLowerCase().contains(".jar")) {
                return jarCleanPath.substring(0, jarCleanPath.lastIndexOf(".jar") + 4);
            } else {
                return null;
            }
        } catch (Exception e) {
            log.error("Error getting JAR path.", e);
            return null;
        }
    }

My complete code working with a Spring Boot application using CommandLineRunner implementation, to ensure that the application always be executed within of a console view (Double clicks by mistake in JAR file name), I am using the next code:

@SpringBootApplication
public class Application implements CommandLineRunner {
    public static void main(String[] args) throws IOException {
        Console console = System.console();

        if (console == null && !GraphicsEnvironment.isHeadless() && isRunningOverJar()) {
            Runtime.getRuntime().exec(new String[]{"cmd", "/c", "start", "cmd", "/k",
                    "java -jar \"" + getPathJar() + "\""});
        } else {
            SpringApplication.run(Application.class, args);
        }
    }

    @Override
    public void run(String... args) {
        /*
        Additional code here...
        */
    }

    private static boolean isRunningOverJar() {
        try {
            String pathJar = Application.class.getResource(Application.class.getSimpleName() + ".class").getFile();

            if (pathJar.toLowerCase().contains(".jar")) {
                return true;
            } else {
                return false;
            }
        } catch (Exception e) {
            return false;
        }
    }

    private static String getPathJar() {
        try {
            final URI jarUriPath =
                    Application.class.getResource(Application.class.getSimpleName() + ".class").toURI();
            String jarStringPath = jarUriPath.toString().replace("jar:", "");
            String jarCleanPath  = Paths.get(new URI(jarStringPath)).toString();

            if (jarCleanPath.toLowerCase().contains(".jar")) {
                return jarCleanPath.substring(0, jarCleanPath.lastIndexOf(".jar") + 4);
            } else {
                return null;
            }
        } catch (Exception e) {
            return null;
        }
    }
}

Have tried several of the solutions up there but none yielded correct results for the (probably special) case that the runnable jar has been exported with "Packaging external libraries" in Eclipse. For some reason all solutions based on the ProtectionDomain do result in null in that case.

From combining some solutions above I managed to achieve the following working code:

String surroundingJar = null;

// gets the path to the jar file if it exists; or the "bin" directory if calling from Eclipse
String jarDir = new File(ClassLoader.getSystemClassLoader().getResource(".").getPath()).getAbsolutePath();

// gets the "bin" directory if calling from eclipse or the name of the .jar file alone (without its path)
String jarFileFromSys = System.getProperty("java.class.path").split(";")[0];

// If both are equal that means it is running from an IDE like Eclipse
if (jarFileFromSys.equals(jarDir))
{
    System.out.println("RUNNING FROM IDE!");
    // The path to the jar is the "bin" directory in that case because there is no actual .jar file.
    surroundingJar = jarDir;
}
else
{
    // Combining the path and the name of the .jar file to achieve the final result
    surroundingJar = jarDir + jarFileFromSys.substring(1);
}

System.out.println("JAR File: " + surroundingJar);

The above methods didn't work for me in my Spring environment, since Spring shades the actual classes into a package called BOOT-INF, thus not the actual location of the running file. I found another way to retrieve the running file through the Permissions object which have been granted to the running file:

public static Path getEnclosingDirectory() {
    return Paths.get(FileUtils.class.getProtectionDomain().getPermissions()
            .elements().nextElement().getName()).getParent();
}

For something stupid simple, all you need is this one line:

For Windows users, change "pwd" to "cd"

runCommand("pwd");

And just throw this method into the class:

public static String runCommand(String command) {
    StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
    try {
        ProcessBuilder pb = new ProcessBuilder(command);
        final Process p = pb.start();
        BufferedReader br = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(p.getInputStream()));
        String line;
        sb.append(br.read());
        while ((line= br.readLine()) != null) sb.append(line).append("\n");
    }
    catch (IOException e) {e.printStackTrace();}
    return sb.toString();
}