How to Zip files using JavaScript?

Question

Is there a way to zip files using JavaScript?? For an example, like in Yahoo mail, when you chose to download all the attachments from an email, it gets zipped and downloaded in a single zip file. Is JavaScript capable of doing that? If so, please provide a coding example.

I found this library called jszip to do the task but it has known and unresolved issues.

How do I solve the problem?

Answer 1

JSZip has been updated over the years. Now you can find it on its GitHub repo

It can be used together with FileSaver.js

You can install them using npm:

npm install jszip --save
npm install file-saver --save

And then import and use them:

import JSZip from 'jszip';
import FileSaver from 'file-saver';

let zip = new JSZip();
zip.file("idlist.txt", `PMID:29651880\r\nPMID:29303721`);
zip.generateAsync({type: "blob"}).then(function(content) {
  FileSaver.saveAs(content, "download.zip");
});

Then you will download a zip file called download.zip, once you've extracted it, and you can find inside a file called idlist.txt, which has got two lines:

PMID:29651880
PMID:29303721

And for your reference, I tested with the following browsers, and all passed:

• Firefox 59.0.2 (Windows 10)
• Chrome 65.0.3325.181 (Windows 10)
• Microsoft Edge 41.16299.371.0 (Windows 10)
• Internet Explorer 11.0.60 (Windows 10)
• Opera 52 (Mac OSX 10.13)
• Safari 11 (Mac OSX 10.13)