zip-a-folder

A fast, dependency-free ZIP/TAR/TGZ creation library using native Node.js compression (zlib), supporting:

• ZIP archives (with optional ZIP64)
• TAR archives (optionally gzipped)
• Globs (single or comma-separated)
• Parallel directory scanning (statConcurrency)
• Custom write streams
• Compression presets (high, medium, uncompressed)
• Fine-grained zlib/gzip control

Everything is implemented natively without JS zip/tar libraries.

⚠️ Incompatible Changes

Version 2

Added support for comma-separated glob lists.
This may change the behavior for cases previously interpreted as “folder only”.

Version 3

Dual-module support (CJS + ESM).

Version 3.1

Added support for destPath to control the internal path layout of created archives.

Version 4 (current)

A major rewrite using:

• Fully native ZIP writer (no dependencies)
• Native TAR + gzip writer
• ZIP64 support for large archives
• Parallel statting (statConcurrency)
• Strict internal path normalization mirroring classic zip-a-folder behavior
• Native glob handling via glob

📦 Installation

npm install zip-a-folder

🚀 Usage

Create a ZIP file

import { zip } from 'zip-a-folder';

await zip('/path/to/folder', '/path/to/archive.zip');

Create a GZIP-compressed TAR file (.tgz)

import { tar } from 'zip-a-folder';

await tar('/path/to/folder', '/path/to/archive.tgz');

🎚 Compression Handling

Supported compression levels:

COMPRESSION_LEVEL.high          // highest compression (default)
COMPRESSION_LEVEL.medium        // balanced
COMPRESSION_LEVEL.uncompressed  // STORE for zip, no-gzip for tar

Example:

import { zip, COMPRESSION_LEVEL } from 'zip-a-folder';

await zip('/path/to/folder', '/path/to/archive.zip', {
    compression: COMPRESSION_LEVEL.medium
});

✨ ZIP Options

Example:

await zip('/dir', '/archive.zip', {
    comment: "Created by zip-a-folder",
    forceZip64: true,
    namePrependSlash: true,
    store: false,
    statConcurrency: 16,
    zlib: { level: 9 }
});

📦 TAR / TGZ Options

Example:

await tar('/dir', '/archive.tgz', {
    gzip: true,
    gzipOptions: { level: 6 }
});

🔧 Custom Write Streams

ZIP and TAR can be written into any stream. If customWriteStream is used, the targetFilePath can be empty or undefined.

import fs from 'fs';
import { zip } from 'zip-a-folder';

const ws = fs.createWriteStream('/tmp/output.zip');
await zip('/path/to/folder', undefined, { customWriteStream: ws });

Important: zip-a-folder does not validate custom streams. You must ensure:

• parent directory exists
• you’re not writing into the source directory (to avoid recursion)

🔍 Glob Handling

The first parameter may be:

• A path to a directory
• A single glob
• A comma-separated list of globs

Example:

await zip('**/*.json', '/archive.zip');
await zip('**/*.json, **/*.txt', '/archive2.zip');

If no files match, zip-a-folder throws:

Error: No glob match found

🗂 Destination Path Handling (destPath)

Adds a prefix inside the archive:

await zip('data/', '/archive.zip', { destPath: 'data/' });

Resulting ZIP layout:

data/file1.txt
data/subdir/file2.txt

Directory Root Inclusion Semantics

When passing a directory path as the first argument (e.g. zip('/path/to/folder', '/archive.zip')), the archive by default contains the contents of that directory at the archive root (i.e. you will see the files inside folder/, not a top-level folder/ directory itself).

Include the directory itself

If you want the archive to unpack into the named folder (so the top level of the archive contains folder/), set destPath to that folder name plus a trailing slash:

await zip('/path/to/folder', '/archive.zip', {
  destPath: 'folder/'
});

Result layout:

folder/file1.txt
folder/sub/file2.txt

Summary

• Default: directory contents only (no enclosing folder)
• To include the folder: use destPath: '<dirname>/'

This applies equally to tar().

🎯 Native Implementation Notes (New in v4)

• ZIP and TAR are written using pure Node.js (zlib, raw buffering)
• ZIP64 support included
• File system scanning performed with a parallel stat queue
• Globs handled via the standardized glob package
• Archive layout matches the original zip-a-folder for compatibility
• ZIP writer supports dependency-free deflate and manual header construction
• TAR writer produces POSIX ustar format with proper 512-byte block alignment

🧪 Running Tests

Tests are written in Jest:

npm test

A coverage report is included:

npm test -- --coverage

❤️ Thanks

Special thanks to contributors:

• @sole – initial work
• @YOONBYEONGIN
• @Wunschik
• @ratbeard
• @Xotabu4
• @dallenbaldwin
• @wiralegawa
• @karan-gaur
• @malthe

Additional thanks to everyone helping shape the native rewrite.