What is a good way to determine the id and version of any forge mod statically?

[TekExplorer]

I'd like to be able to determine the version and id of any mod.

Basically, I am creating a service that will read the jar files and determine if an update is available, or even just indicate to a downloader that the mod is already installed.

How can I do this? I found that there is a `META-INF/mods.toml` that appears to be in the right direction, except that checking some mods like appleskin has `version="${file.jarVersion}"` which... isnt a version.

Looking around, i see that there is a `MANIFEST.MF` which is mostly useless for many of them, but appleskin had an actual version in it `Implementation-Version: 2.5.1+mc1.20.2`
Is this something i can rely on? either `mods.toml`, but if it has `"${file.jarVersion}"` then it's in `MANIFEST.MF`?

Or is there some pitfall i'm missing?

[Luis_ST]

13 hours ago, TekExplorer said:

Basically, I am creating a service that will read the jar files and determine if an update is available, or even just indicate to a downloader that the mod is already installed.

Why, forge already has an update checker?

[TekExplorer]

1 hour ago, Luis_ST said:

Why, forge already has an update checker?

Thats not the point. i need to be able to check what exists without running the jar

Edited November 12, 2023 by TekExplorer
oops

[Luis_ST]

What did you try to achieve?

[LexManos]

jar.manifestVersion is the version you found in the manifest. So if a mod specifies that as their version, then check the manifest.

[Luis_ST]

You could also checkout ModInfo#getVersion