Java

Extract ZIP Files Without Preserving Directory Paths Using DiscardPaths

See more Zip Examples

This example demonstrates how to use the DiscardPaths property to extract files from a ZIP archive without recreating the stored directory structure.

When DiscardPaths is set to _TRUE_, all extracted files are written directly into the target extraction directory, and any stored ZIP path information is ignored.

This is useful when:

• Flattening ZIP contents into a single directory
• Ignoring stored subdirectory structures during extraction
• Extracting only the files themselves without recreating folders

Suppose the ZIP archive contains:

docs/readme.txt
docs/manual.pdf
images/logo.png

Normally, extracting the ZIP would create:

output/docs/readme.txt
output/docs/manual.pdf
output/images/logo.png

But when DiscardPaths is set to _TRUE_, the extracted files become:

output/readme.txt
output/manual.pdf
output/logo.png

The stored ZIP directory paths are discarded during extraction.

Chilkat2 Java

import com.chilkatsoft.chilkat2.ChilkatException;
import com.chilkatsoft.chilkat2.Zip;

public class ChilkatExample {

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        Zip zip = new Zip();

        // Open an existing ZIP archive.
        try {
            zip.openZip("example.zip");
        } catch (ChilkatException e) {
            System.out.println(e.getLastErrorText());
            return;
        }

        // Discard stored ZIP paths during extraction.
        //
        // When DiscardPaths = true, all files are extracted
        // directly into the target directory without recreating
        // the ZIP directory structure.
        zip.setDiscardPaths(true);

        // Extract all files to the output directory.
        //
        // Even if the ZIP contains:
        //
        //     docs/readme.txt
        //     docs/manual.pdf
        //     images/logo.png
        //
        // The extracted files become:
        //
        //     c:/output/readme.txt
        //     c:/output/manual.pdf
        //     c:/output/logo.png
        //
        int numFilesUnzipped = zip.unzip("c:/output");

        if (numFilesUnzipped < 0) {
            System.out.println(zip.getLastErrorText());
            return;
        }

        System.out.println("Number of files extracted = " + numFilesUnzipped);

        zip.closeZip();

        System.out.println("Files extracted successfully.");
    }
}