ByteArray example: Reading a .zip file

This example demonstrates how to read a simple .zip file containing several files of different types. It does so by extracting relevant data from the metadata for each file, uncompressing each file into a ByteArray and writing the file to the desktop.

The general structure of a .zip file is based on the specification by PKWARE Inc., which is maintained at http://www.pkware.com/documents/casestudies/APPNOTE.TXT . First is a file header and file data for the first file in the .zip archive, followed by a file header and file data pair for each additional file. (The structure of the file header is described later.) Next, the .zip file optionally includes a data descriptor record (usually when the output zip file was created in memory rather than saved to a disk). Next are several additional optional elements: archive decryption header, archive extra data record, central directory structure, Zip64 end of central directory record, Zip64 end of central directory locator, and end of central directory record.

The code in this example is written to only parse zip files that do not contain folders and it does not expect data descriptor records. It ignores all information following the last file data.

The format of the file header for each file is as follows:

Following the file header is the actual file data, which can be either compressed or uncompressed, depending on the compression method flag. The flag is 0 (zero) if the file data is uncompressed, 8 if the data is compressed using the DEFLATE algorithm, or another value for other compression algorithms.

The user interface for this example consists of a label and a text area ( taFiles ). The application writes the following information to the text area for each file it encounters in the .zip file: the file name, the compressed size, and the uncompressed size. The following MXML document defines the user interface for the Flex version of the application:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> 
<mx:WindowedApplication xmlns:mx="http://www.adobe.com/2006/mxml" layout="vertical" creationComplete="init();"> 
    <mx:Script> 
        <![CDATA[ 
            // The application code goes here 
        ]]> 
    </mx:Script> 
    <mx:Form> 
        <mx:FormItem label="Output"> 
            <mx:TextArea id="taFiles" width="320" height="150"/> 
        </mx:FormItem> 
    </mx:Form> 
</mx:WindowedApplication>

The beginning of the program performs the following tasks:

• Imports the required classes

  import flash.filesystem.*; 
  import flash.utils.ByteArray; 
  import flash.events.Event;

• Defines the user interface for Flash

  import fl.controls.*; 
   
  //requires TextArea and Label components in the Library 
  var taFiles = new TextArea(); 
  var output = new Label(); 
  taFiles.setSize(320, 150); 
  taFiles.move(10, 30); 
  output.move(10, 10); 
  output.width = 150; 
  output.text = "Contents of HelloAir.zip"; 
  addChild(taFiles); 
  addChild(output);

• Defines the bytes ByteArray

  var bytes:ByteArray = new ByteArray(); 

• Defines variables to store metadata from the file header

  // variables for reading fixed portion of file header 
  var fileName:String = new String(); 
  var flNameLength:uint; 
  var xfldLength:uint; 
  var offset:uint; 
  var compSize:uint; 
  var uncompSize:uint; 
  var compMethod:int; 
  var signature:int; 

• Defines File ( zfile ) and FileStream ( zStream ) objects to represent the .zip file, and specifies the location of the .zip file from which the files are extracted—a file named “HelloAIR.zip” in the desktop directory.

  // File variables for accessing .zip file 
  var zfile:File = File.desktopDirectory.resolvePath("HelloAIR.zip"); 
  var zStream:FileStream = new FileStream();

In Flex, the program code starts in the init() method, which is called as the creationComplete handler for the root mx:WindowedApplication tag.

// for Flex 
private function init():void 
{

The program begins by opening the .zip file in READ mode.

    zStream.open(zfile, FileMode.READ); 

It then sets the endian property of bytes to LITTLE_ENDIAN to indicate that the byte order of numeric fields has the least significant byte first.

    bytes.endian = Endian.LITTLE_ENDIAN; 

Next, a while() statement begins a loop that continues until the current position in the file stream is greater than or equal to the size of the file.

    while (zStream.position < zfile.size) 
    {

The first statement inside the loop reads the first 30 bytes of the file stream into the ByteArray bytes . The first 30 bytes make up the fixed-size part of the first file header.

        // read fixed metadata portion of local file header 
        zStream.readBytes(bytes, 0, 30);

Next, the code reads an integer ( signature ) from the first bytes of the 30-byte header. The ZIP format definition specifies that the signature for every file header is the hexadecimal value 0x04034b50 ; if the signature is different it means that the code has moved beyond the file portion of the .zip file and there are no more files to extract. In that case the code exits the while loop immediately rather than waiting for the end of the byte array.

        bytes.position = 0; 
        signature = bytes.readInt(); 
        // if no longer reading data files, quit 
        if (signature != 0x04034b50) 
        { 
            break; 
        }

The next part of the code reads the header byte at offset position 8 and stores the value in the variable compMethod . This byte contains a value indicating the compression method that was used to compress this file. Several compression methods are allowed, but in practice nearly all .zip files use the DEFLATE compression algorithm. If the current file is compressed with DEFLATE compression, compMethod is 8; if the file is uncompressed, compMethod is 0.

        bytes.position = 8; 
        compMethod = bytes.readByte();  // store compression method (8 == Deflate)

Following the first 30 bytes is a variable-length portion of the header that contains the file name and, possibly, an extra field. The variable offset stores the size of this portion. The size is calculated by adding the file name length and extra field length, read from the header at offsets 26 and 28.

        offset = 0;    // stores length of variable portion of metadata  
        bytes.position = 26;  // offset to file name length 
        flNameLength = bytes.readShort();    // store file name 
        offset += flNameLength;     // add length of file name 
        bytes.position = 28;    // offset to extra field length 
        xfldLength = bytes.readShort(); 
        offset += xfldLength;    // add length of extra field

Next the program reads the variable-length portion of the file header for the number of bytes stored in the offset variable.

        // read variable length bytes between fixed-length header and compressed file data 
        zStream.readBytes(bytes, 30, offset);

The program reads the file name from the variable length portion of the header and displays it in the text area along with the compressed (zipped) and uncompressed (original) sizes of the file.

// Flash version 
        bytes.position = 30;  
        fileName = bytes.readUTFBytes(flNameLength); // read file name 
        taFiles.appendText(fileName + "\n"); // write file name to text area 
        bytes.position = 18; 
        compSize = bytes.readUnsignedInt();  // store size of compressed portion 
        taFiles.appendText("\tCompressed size is: " + compSize + '\n'); 
        bytes.position = 22;  // offset to uncompressed size 
        uncompSize = bytes.readUnsignedInt();  // store uncompressed size 
        taFiles.appendText("\tUncompressed size is: " + uncompSize + '\n'); 
        

// Flex version 
        bytes.position = 30;  
        fileName = bytes.readUTFBytes(flNameLength); // read file name 
        taFiles.text += fileName + "\n"; // write file name to text area 
        bytes.position = 18; 
        compSize = bytes.readUnsignedInt();  // store size of compressed portion 
        taFiles.text += "\tCompressed size is: " + compSize + '\n'; 
        bytes.position = 22;  // offset to uncompressed size 
        uncompSize = bytes.readUnsignedInt();  // store uncompressed size 
        taFiles.text += "\tUncompressed size is: " + uncompSize + '\n'; 

The example reads the rest of the file from the file stream into bytes for the length specified by the compressed size, overwriting the file header in the first 30 bytes. The compressed size is accurate even if the file is not compressed because in that case the compressed size is equal to the uncompressed size of the file.

    // read compressed file to offset 0 of bytes; for uncompressed files 
    // the compressed and uncompressed size is the same 
    if (compSize == 0) continue; 
    zStream.readBytes(bytes, 0, compSize);

Next, the example uncompresses the compressed file and calls the outfile() function to write it to the output file stream. It passes outfile() the file name and the byte array containing the file data.

        if (compMethod == 8) // if file is compressed, uncompress 
        { 
            bytes.uncompress(CompressionAlgorithm.DEFLATE); 
        } 
        outFile(fileName, bytes);   // call outFile() to write out the file

In the previously mentioned example, bytes.uncompress(CompressionAlgorithm.DEFLATE) will work only in AIR applications. To get deflated data uncompressed for both AIR and Flash Player, invoke ByteArray’s inflate() function.

The closing braces indicate the end of the while loop, and of the init() method and the Flex application code, except for the outFile() method. Execution loops back to the beginning of the while loop and continues processing the next bytes in the .zip file—either extracting another file or ending processing of the .zip file if the last file has been processed.

    } // end of while loop 
} // for Flex version, end of init() method and application

The outfile() function opens an output file in WRITE mode on the desktop, giving it the name supplied by the filename parameter. It then writes the file data from the data parameter to the output file stream ( outStream ) and closes the file.

// Flash version 
function outFile(fileName:String, data:ByteArray):void 
{ 
    var outFile:File = File.desktopDirectory; // destination folder is desktop 
    outFile = outFile.resolvePath(fileName);  // name of file to write 
    var outStream:FileStream = new FileStream(); 
    // open output file stream in WRITE mode 
    outStream.open(outFile, FileMode.WRITE); 
    // write out the file 
    outStream.writeBytes(data, 0, data.length); 
    // close it 
    outStream.close(); 
} 

private function outFile(fileName:String, data:ByteArray):void 
{ 
    var outFile:File = File.desktopDirectory; // dest folder is desktop 
    outFile = outFile.resolvePath(fileName);  // name of file to write 
    var outStream:FileStream = new FileStream(); 
    // open output file stream in WRITE mode 
    outStream.open(outFile, FileMode.WRITE); 
    // write out the file 
    outStream.writeBytes(data, 0, data.length); 
    // close it 
    outStream.close(); 
} 

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