Unzip zip file using PHP

When I move some application to servers, in some rare cases, client server was little difficult to manage. The GUI was very messy or missing & there is no SSH access.

Normally we upload files & folders in zip format to improve speed. Also if we upload zip files, there is very less chance for file / folder missing.

After uploading, I need to extract the content without GUI & SSH access. Below you can find few methods that help me to solve the problem.

Using PHP built-in extensions

$zip = new ZipArchive;
$res = $zip->open('file.zip');
if ($res === TRUE) {
  $zip->extractTo('/myzips/extract_path/');
  $zip->close();
  echo 'Done!';
} else {
  echo 'Failed!';
}

Note: If you need to extract in the same directory, use getcwd() function to get current path.

//$zip->extractTo('/myzips/extract_path/');
$zip->extractTo(getcwd());

Using Unix unzip command

<?php system('unzip wordpress.zip'); ?>

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This article was published on February 3, 2018

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