Xojo Plugin

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.

Xojo Plugin

Dim success As Boolean
success = False

success = False

Dim zip As New Chilkat.Zip

// Open an existing ZIP archive.
success = zip.OpenZip("example.zip")
If (success = False) Then
    System.DebugLog(zip.LastErrorText)
    Return
End If

// 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.DiscardPaths = 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
// 
Dim numFilesUnzipped As Int32
numFilesUnzipped = zip.Unzip("c:/output")

If (numFilesUnzipped < 0) Then
    System.DebugLog(zip.LastErrorText)
    Return
End If

System.DebugLog("Number of files extracted = " + Str(numFilesUnzipped))

zip.CloseZip 

System.DebugLog("Files extracted successfully.")