Compress / archive a folder using a PHP script

Question

Is there a way to compress / archive a folder on the server using php script in .zip or .rar or in any other compressed format so that we can archive the folder upon request and then give a download link

Thank you in advance

Answer 1

Here is an example:

<?php // Adding files to a .zip file, no zip file exists it creates a new ZIP file // increase script timeout value ini_set('max_execution_time', 5000); // create object $zip = new ZipArchive(); // open archive if ($zip->open('my-archive.zip', ZIPARCHIVE::CREATE) !== TRUE) { die ("Could not open archive"); } // initialize an iterator // pass it the directory to be processed $iterator = new RecursiveIteratorIterator(new RecursiveDirectoryIterator("themes/")); // iterate over the directory // add each file found to the archive foreach ($iterator as $key=>$value) { $zip->addFile(realpath($key), $key) or die ("ERROR: Could not add file: $key"); } // close and save archive $zip->close(); echo "Archive created successfully."; ?> 

Answer 2

Beware of the possible problem in the Adnan example: if the target file myarchive.zip is inside the source folder, you need to exclude it in a loop or run an iterator before creating the archive file (if it doesn't already exist). Here is a revised script that uses the latter , and adds some configuration vars at the top.This cannot be used to add to an existing archive.

 <?php // Config Vars $sourcefolder = "./" ; // Default: "./" $zipfilename = "myarchive.zip"; // Default: "myarchive.zip" $timeout = 5000 ; // Default: 5000 // instantate an iterator (before creating the zip archive, just // in case the zip file is created inside the source folder) // and traverse the directory to get the file list. $dirlist = new RecursiveDirectoryIterator($sourcefolder); $filelist = new RecursiveIteratorIterator($dirlist); // set script timeout value ini_set('max_execution_time', $timeout); // instantate object $zip = new ZipArchive(); // create and open the archive if ($zip->open("$zipfilename", ZipArchive::CREATE) !== TRUE) { die ("Could not open archive"); } // add each file in the file list to the archive foreach ($filelist as $key=>$value) { $zip->addFile(realpath($key), $key) or die ("ERROR: Could not add file: $key"); } // close the archive $zip->close(); echo "Archive ". $zipfilename . " created successfully."; // And provide download link ?> <a href="http:<?php echo $zipfilename;?>" target="_blank"> Download <?php echo $zipfilename?></a> 

Answer 3

PHP comes with a ZipArchive extension that is right for you.