Question

I’m making a website, using codeigniter, that will enable users to download files a bit like gmail. By that I mean that the user can download only 1 file or all files in a zip folder.

Because there will be many files, I have encoded their names to avoid duplicates and stored their original names in a database which returns me an array like this:

Array
(
    [0] => Array
        (
            [file_id] => 2
            [file_name] => v6_copy.pdf
            [file_path] => uploads/4/d5/67697ff58d09d3fb25d563bf85d3f1ac.pdf
        )

    [1] => Array
        (
            [file_id] => 3
            [file_name] => v4_copy.pdf
            [file_path] => uploads/7/cf/38212079635e93a8f8f4d4a3fc2a11ff.pdf
        )

)

What I need to do is, get each file, rename them to their original names and then zip it in one zip. I’m currently trying to use the codeigniter zip helper, but I can’t seem to be able to rename the files.

foreach ($query->result() as $row) // This returns what you see above
{
    // I need to rename the file somewhere here
    $this->zip->read_file($row->filename); 
}

$this->zip->download('files_backup.zip');

Is there a way to do this without creating manually a directory, copying the files, renaming them and then zipping the file?

Any help most appreciated.

Answer 1

Thanks to @Gordon ‘s answer, I found a solution.
He is completely right about Codeigniter not being able to rename a file, but I found a really quick change to the library and it seems to be working.

If you go to your system>librairies->Zip.php like mentioned by @Gordon, search for “read_file” and you’ll find the function.

Then I simply added a argument to the function and modified some of the code thereafter, see below:

function read_file($path, $preserve_filepath = FALSE, $name = NULL) // Added $name
{
    if ( ! file_exists($path))
    {
        return FALSE;
    }

    if (FALSE !== ($data = file_get_contents($path)))
    {
            if($name == NULL){  // Added a verification to see if it is set, if not set, then it does it's normal thing, if it is set, it uses the defined var.
        $name = str_replace("\\", "/", $path);

        if ($preserve_filepath === FALSE)
        {
            $name = preg_replace("|.*/(.+)|", "\\1", $name);
        }
            }

        $this->add_data($name, $data);
        return TRUE;
    }
    return FALSE;
}

I hope this helps others. Thanks again @Gordon