Reading my own Jar’s Manifest

You can do one of two things:

1. Call getResources() and iterate through the returned collection of URLs, reading them as manifests until you find yours:

   Enumeration<URL> resources = getClass().getClassLoader()
     .getResources("META-INF/MANIFEST.MF");
   while (resources.hasMoreElements()) {
       try {
         Manifest manifest = new Manifest(resources.nextElement().openStream());
         // check that this is your manifest and do what you need or get the next one
         ...
       } catch (IOException E) {
         // handle
       }
   }
   

2. You can try checking whether getClass().getClassLoader() is an instance of java.net.URLClassLoader. Majority of Sun classloaders are, including AppletClassLoader.
   You can then cast it and call findResource() which has been known – for applets, at least – to return the needed manifest directly:

   URLClassLoader cl = (URLClassLoader) getClass().getClassLoader();
   try {
     URL url = cl.findResource("META-INF/MANIFEST.MF");
     Manifest manifest = new Manifest(url.openStream());
     // do stuff with it
     ...
   } catch (IOException E) {
     // handle
   }