In memory download and extract zip archive

Question

I would like to download a zip archive and unzip it in memory using PHP.

This is what I have today (and it's just too much file-handling for me :) ):

// download the data file from the real page
copy("http://www.curriculummagic.com/AdvancedBalloons.kmz", "./data/zip.kmz");

// unzip it
$zip = new ZipArchive;
$res = $zip->open('./data/zip.kmz');
if ($res === TRUE) {
    $zip->extractTo('./data');
    $zip->close();
}

// use the unzipped files...

score 18 · Accepted Answer · edited Apr 10 '13 at 15:23

18

Warning: This cannot be done in memory — ZipArchive cannot work with "memory mapped files".

You can obtain the data of a file inside a zip-file into a variable (memory) with file_get_contents^Docs as it supports the zip:// Stream wrapper ^Docs:

$zipFile = './data/zip.kmz';     # path of zip-file
$fileInZip = 'test.txt';         # name the file to obtain

# read the file's data:
$path = sprintf('zip://%s#%s', $zipFile, $fileInZip);
$fileData = file_get_contents($path);

You can only access local files with zip:// or via ZipArchive. For that you can first copy the contents to a temporary file and work with it:

$zip = 'http://www.curriculummagic.com/AdvancedBalloons.kmz';
$file = 'doc.kml';

$ext = pathinfo($zip, PATHINFO_EXTENSION);
$temp = tempnam(sys_get_temp_dir(), $ext);
copy($zip, $temp);
$data = file_get_contents("zip://$temp#$file");
unlink($temp);

edited Apr 10 '13 at 15:23

Gilles 'SO- stop being evil'

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answered Sep 12 '11 at 18:19

hakre

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No, `zip://` supports only local files so far (as well as ZipArchive). You have to have it accessible via your standard file-system. Will update the answer to make this visible for your `http` url. – hakre Sep 12 '11 at 19:09
No, stacked streams are not supported, I guess even `file://` won't work. It needs to be the path to the filesystem. Same for the `ZipArchive` class, I assume this relates to each other. Streams are not that well supported within the zip PHP extension, which is a bit pity in my eyes. Go for the tempfile to work around that, the second code example. You can encapsulate that into a class of it's own extending/decorating ZipArchive and provide a file-system wrapper that is capable of to have this more fluent. – hakre Sep 15 '11 at 10:54
@dacwe: If your file-system mounts a ramdisk, there is no problem at all to have `ZipArchive` work in memory - for what it matters :) – hakre Sep 15 '11 at 12:21
Yeah, that was actually the way I solved it, but it's not a php solution.. :) – dacwe Sep 15 '11 at 13:11

score 5 · Answer 2 · edited Jul 07 '23 at 07:22

Old subject but still relevant since I asked myself the same question, without finding an answer.

I ended up writing this function which returns an array containing the name of each file contained in the archive, as well as the decompressed contents of that file:

function GetZipContent(String $body_containing_zip_file) {

    $sectors = explode("\x50\x4b\x01\x02", $body_containing_zip_file);
    array_pop($sectors);
    $files = explode("\x50\x4b\x03\x04", implode("\x50\x4b\x01\x02", $sectors));
    array_shift($files);

    $result = array();
    foreach($files as $file) {
        $header = unpack("vversion/vflag/vmethod/vmodification_time/vmodification_date/Vcrc/Vcompressed_size/Vuncompressed_size/vfilename_length/vextrafield_length", $file);
        array_push($result, [
            'filename' => substr($file, 26, $header['filename_length']),
            'content' => gzinflate(substr($file, 26 + $header['filename_length'], -12))
        ]);
    }
    
    return $result;
}

FYI - this is just a stub. $data is undefined on the first line — JJ Rohrer, Jul 13 '22 at 14:11
This is like UBER useful! Thank you! I used this to grab a zipped file from CURL and process it without having to hit the file system! You totally rock! — Yourguide, Mar 15 '23 at 14:13

score 4 · Answer 3 · answered May 08 '16 at 15:50

4

As easy as:

$zipFile = "test.zip";
$fileInsideZip = "somefile.txt";
$content = file_get_contents("zip://$zipFile#$fileInsideZip");

answered May 08 '16 at 15:50

Pedro Lobito

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score 1 · Answer 4 · answered Sep 12 '11 at 18:09

1

You can get a stream to a file inside the zip and extract it into a variable:

$fp = $zip->getStream('test.txt');
if(!$fp) exit("failed\n");

while (!feof($fp)) {
    $contents .= fread($fp, 1024);
}

fclose($fp);

answered Sep 12 '11 at 18:09

CodeCaster

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How can I download the file and "pipe" it to the `$zip`? – dacwe Sep 12 '11 at 18:32

user965748 · Answer 5 · 2015-05-11T16:14:07.100

-1

If you can use system calls, the simplest way should look like this (bzip2 case). You just use stdout.

$out=shell_exec('bzip2 -dkc '.$zip);

edited May 11 '15 at 16:14

answered May 11 '15 at 15:18

user965748

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In memory download and extract zip archive

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