Zip archives in node.js

Question

I want to create a zip archive and unzip it in node.js.

I can't find any node implementation.

Answer 1

I ended up doing it like this (I'm using Express). I'm creating a ZIP that contains all the files on a given directory (SCRIPTS_PATH).

I've only tested this on Mac OS X Lion, but I guess it'll work just fine on Linux and Windows with Cygwin installed.

var spawn = require('child_process').spawn;
app.get('/scripts/archive', function(req, res) {
    // Options -r recursive -j ignore directory info - redirect to stdout
    var zip = spawn('zip', ['-rj', '-', SCRIPTS_PATH]);

    res.contentType('zip');

    // Keep writing stdout to res
    zip.stdout.on('data', function (data) {
        res.write(data);
    });

    zip.stderr.on('data', function (data) {
        // Uncomment to see the files being added
        // console.log('zip stderr: ' + data);
    });

    // End the response on zip exit
    zip.on('exit', function (code) {
        if(code !== 0) {
            res.statusCode = 500;
            console.log('zip process exited with code ' + code);
            res.end();
        } else {
            res.end();
        }
    });
});