How To Zip Multiple Files In Php

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In this blog post, we will learn how to create a zip file containing multiple files in PHP. This can be very useful when you need to compress multiple files into a single archive file to reduce the file size or to share the files easily. Let’s dive into the process!

Creating a Zip Archive in PHP

To create a zip archive in PHP, we can use the ZipArchive class provided by the PHP Zip extension. First, you need to ensure that the Zip extension is installed and enabled on your server. To check if the extension is enabled, you can run the following command:

php -m | grep zip

If the output shows zip, then the extension is enabled. If not, you need to install and enable it. Once the extension is enabled, you can start creating a zip archive using the following simple steps:

  1. Create an instance of the ZipArchive class
  2. Open or create a new zip file using the open() method
  3. Add files to the archive using the addFile() method
  4. Close the archive using the close() method

Example: Zipping Multiple Files in PHP

Let’s create a sample PHP script that demonstrates how to zip multiple files. In this example, we will zip two files named file1.txt and file2.txt into a single archive named archive.zip.

<?php

// Create an instance of the ZipArchive class
$zip = new ZipArchive();

// Open or create a new zip file
$zipFilename = 'archive.zip';

if ($zip->open($zipFilename, ZipArchive::CREATE) !== true) {
    die("Failed to create or open the archive '$zipFilename'");
}

// Add files to the archive
$zip->addFile('file1.txt', 'file1.txt');
$zip->addFile('file2.txt', 'file2.txt');

// Close the archive
$zip->close();

echo "The files have been zipped into '$zipFilename'";

?>

When you run this script, it will create a zip archive named archive.zip containing the files file1.txt and file2.txt.

Conclusion

In this blog post, we learned how to create a zip archive containing multiple files using the PHP Zip extension and the ZipArchive class. This method can be helpful for compressing multiple files into a single archive for easier file sharing or storage. Remember to ensure the Zip extension is enabled on your server to use the ZipArchive class in your PHP scripts.