Question

Can I include a file from a zip file in PHP? For example consider I have a zip file – test.zip and test.zip contains a file by the name a.php. Now, what I would like to do is something like below,

include “test.zip/a.php”;

Is this possible? If it is can anyone provide me a code snippet?? If not, id there any other alternative to do this??

Answer 1

$zip = new ZipArchive('test.zip');

$tmp = tmpfile();
$metadata = stream_get_meta_data($tmp);

file_put_content($metadata['uri'], $zip->getFromName('a.php'));

include $metadata['uri'];

To go further, you may be interested in PHAR archive, which basically a Zip archive.

Edit:

With a cache strategy:

if (apc_exists('test_zip_a_php')) {
    $content = apc_fetch('test_zip_a_php');
} else {
    $zip = new ZipArchive('test.zip');
    $content = $zip->getFromName('a.php');
    apc_add('test_zip_a_php', $content);
}

$f = fopen('php://memory', 'w+');
fwrite($f, $content);
rewind($f);
// Note to use such include you need  `allow_url_include` directive sets to `On`
include('data://text/plain,'.stream_get_contents($f));