Lua

Add a Common Root Directory to ZIP Entries Using PathPrefix

See more Zip Examples

This example demonstrates how to use the PathPrefix property to prepend a common directory path to all entries added to a ZIP archive.

The PathPrefix value is prepended to the stored ZIP paths for subsequently added entries.

This is useful when:

• Creating ZIP archives that extract beneath a single root directory
• Packaging applications or projects into a named top-level folder
• Avoiding extraction directly into the current directory
• Organizing ZIP contents beneath a common parent directory

Suppose the local filesystem contains:

c:/MyProject/src/main.cpp
c:/MyProject/src/util.cpp
c:/MyProject/docs/readme.txt

And suppose the following code is executed:

zip.PathPrefix = "MyProject/";

Then the ZIP archive will contain:

MyProject/src/main.cpp
MyProject/src/util.cpp
MyProject/docs/readme.txt

Without a PathPrefix, the ZIP archive would instead contain:

src/main.cpp
src/util.cpp
docs/readme.txt

The PathPrefix is applied only to entries added after the property is set.

Lua

local chilkat = require("chilkat")

local zip = chilkat.Zip.new()

-- Create a new ZIP archive.
local success = zip:new_zip("MyProject.zip")
if not success then
    print(zip.last_error_text)
    return
end

-- Prepend "MyProject/" to all subsequently added ZIP entries.
--
-- This causes all files to extract beneath a top-level
-- directory named "MyProject".
zip.path_prefix = "MyProject/"

-- Recursively add project files.
--
-- Because saveExtraPath = false, the stored ZIP paths
-- will normally begin with:
--
--     src/
--     docs/
--
-- But because PathPrefix = "MyProject/",
-- the final ZIP paths become:
--
--     MyProject/src/
--     MyProject/docs/
--
local recurse = true
success = zip:append_files("c:/MyProject/*", recurse)

if not success then
    print(zip.last_error_text)
    return
end

-- Write the ZIP archive and close it.
success = zip:write_zip_and_close()
if not success then
    print(zip.last_error_text)
    return
end

print("ZIP archive created successfully.")