PHP and Zipping on the fly

acidity

Hello

I am trying to zip a MySQL query result as file and allow the user to download. Using http://us2.php.net/manual/en/function.ziparchive-addfromstring.php is not an option as I dont have the correct libraries installed on the server and I cant install it.

So somebody suggested to use phpmyadmins zip library.

I am using the following code: http://pastebin.com/m341000d to generate my zip. The code for phpmyadmins libaray is: http://phpmyadmin.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/checkout/phpmyadmin/trunk/phpMyAdmin/libraries/zip.lib.php

But when I try to unzip it, the unzip utility (using the unzip tool that comes with Linux and Mac), it gives me a warning that there are extra 3 bytes at the start or in the zip file.

Due to this warning, safari dosnt unzip the file by default and I have to go to the command line and zip it.

Any idea what might be wrong? Or any suggestion for some other good zip module.

bpat1434

Out of curiosity, you note that you can't use the ZipArchive class native to PHP because the extensions aren't installed. If you're using php 5.2.x, and zlib is enabled (as it has to be for gzcompress to work) then why not just use the ZipArchive class? For php 5.2.x it just requires zlib (--enable-zip in the configure command).

acidity

Well, the PHP installation is done by our school administrator and it dosnt seem to be enabled. They will not recompile or change any config details if I ask them.

Horizon88

If you've got a school admin with a control issue, chances are this won't wrk, but if you're on a Linux server you could hook a system() call to tar?

bpat1434

If you have a really stupid IT department (mine was) you could try and use the [man]dl/man function to load the extension dynamically. Just try calling dl('zlib.so') if you're on linux or dl('php_zlib.dll') if your on windows. That would dynamically load the zlib extension.

Otherwise, if it's not loaded, you might just have to go get a cheap shared hosting provider and use them.