Question

I’ve been searching for it and I’ve not been able to find it. I wanted to know if it is possible to Zip a folder without any external dll nor any external references – just with native features.

I’ve been able to Zip files with System.IO.Packaging, but it does not include folders and I cannot tell it to Zip the parent folder.

I know there are external dll and so, but I’d like to know if it’s possible to make it from a native way.

Thank you.

Answer 1

Your best bet is to use a 3rd party library. But if you can’t I found this blog post that describes how to do it using System.IO.Packaging. Note this is c# not vb, but the example use of the framework is all you should need.

http://weblogs.asp.net/albertpascual/archive/2009/05/18/creating-a-folder-inside-the-zip-file-with-system-io-packaging.aspx

private static void AddFileToZip(string zipFilename, string fileToAdd, string sDirectory)
{
    using (Package zip = System.IO.Packaging.Package.Open(zipFilename, FileMode.OpenOrCreate))
    {
        string destFilename = ".\\" + sDirectory + "\\" + Path.GetFileName(fileToAdd);
        Uri uri = PackUriHelper.CreatePartUri(new Uri(destFilename, UriKind.Relative));

        if (zip.PartExists(uri))
        {
            zip.DeletePart(uri);
        }

        PackagePart part = zip.CreatePart(uri, "", CompressionOption.Normal);

        using (FileStream fileStream = new FileStream(fileToAdd, FileMode.Open, FileAccess.Read))
        {
            using (Stream dest = part.GetStream())
            {
                CopyStream(fileStream, dest);
            }
        }
    }
}

That post references another post by Jon Galloway that talks about 3rd party libraries and doing it manually. That is a good reference as well.