Question

I’m looking in “PhysicsFS” documentation and search for way to archive and compress data but can’t find.Is it possible and if it is how i can do that

Answer 1

PhysicsFS zip support

PhysicsFS has support for reading files from a zip file mounted at an arbitrary point in the “virtual filesystem” that it provide. This effectively provide decompression from a ZIP archive.

However, PhysicsFS has no support to add or modify the content of a ZIP archive. It only permit to write uncompressed files in what is called “the write directory” in its documentation.

So, to summarize: PhysicsFS only support reading from ZIP archives, not writing to it.
For the compression you are on your own: just zip all the written files using an external compressor if you need so.

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PhysicsFS usage

There is a small tutorial for PhysicsFS here.

It is very simple to use:

// initialize the lib
PHYSFS_init(NULL);

// "mount" a zip file in the root directory
PHYSFS_AddToSearchPath("myzip.zip", 1);

// set a directory for writing
PHYSFS_setWriteDir(const char *newDir);

// open a file for reading
PHYSFS_file* myfile = PHYSFS_openRead("myfile.txt");

// open a file for writing
PHYSFS_file* myfile = PHYSFS_openWrite("output_file.bin");

// get a file size
PHYSFS_sint64 file_size = PHYSFS_fileLength(myfile);

// read data from a file (decompress only if path is inside a zip mount point)
char* myBuf = new char[file_size];
int length_readed = PHYSFS_read(myfile, myBuf, 1, file_size);

// write data to a file (uncompressed)
char* myBuf = new char[new_file_size];
//...fill myBuf...
int length_writed = PHYSFS_write(myfile, myBuf, 1, new_file_size);

// close a file
PHYSFS_close(myfile);

// deinitialize the lib
PHYSFS_deinit();