Manipulate an Archive in memory with PHP (without creating a temporary file on disk)?

You might be able to use the stream php://temp or php://memory to read and write to/from the archive See php.net/manual/en/wrappers.php.php.

You might be able to use the stream php://temp or php://memory to read and write to/from the archive. See php.net/manual/en/wrappers.php.php.

At the moment, I'm using the php zip extension and writing a tempfile whenever I serve a download. I tried using the php://temp wrapper (figuring that it was superior to php://memory, as with large quantities of data, a tempfile IS a good idea, and hosts might allow its use even while restricting fs access. I ran into the problem that I had to close the zipfile, which appearantly freed everything in php://temp/ .(Reading from the zipfile before and after closing gave me 0 bytes.) Anyway, I don't care about the library I use, as long as it works.

PHP-internal would be preferred, of course. – tkolar Jul 28 '09 at 7:10.

Regarding your comment that php://temp works for you except when you close it, try keeping it open, flushing the output, then rewind it back to 0 and read it. Look here for more examples: us.php.net/manual/en/function.tmpfile.php Also research output buffering and capturing: us.php.net/manual/en/function.ob-start.php.

You need to use ZipArchive::addFromString - if you use addFile() the file is not actually added until you go to close it. (Horrible bug imho, what if you are trying to move files into a zip and you delete them before you close the zip...) addFromString() adds it to the archive immediately.

A lot of processes write temporary files and delete them, and often they never hit the disk due to caching. A tempfile is automatically deleted when closed. That's it's nature.

There are only two ways I can think of to create a zip file in memory and serve it and both are probably more trouble than they are worth. Use a ram disk. Modify the ziparchive class to add a method that does everything the close() method does, except actually close the file.

(Or add a leave-open parameter to close()). This might not even be possible depending on the underlying C libraries.

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