Xceed Zip Compression Library

What's New in Xceed Zip Compression Library 6.5?

Xceed Zip Compression Library 6.5 incorporates the latest Zip and compression standards by supporting the LZMA algorithm, used by WinZip 12. UTF-8 character encoding in headers is also provided for improved multilingual support.

What's New in Xceed Zip Compression Library 6.0?

• When AES encryption is used and each file in the Zip archive has a different password, the InvalidPassword event is no longer fired a second time after the correct password is given.
• Features AES strong encryption, which brings security capabilities to Xceed's Zip compression library. The encryption in this version is compatible with WinZip 9.0's AES encryption, meaning that users can open zipped files created by Xceed's library

What's New in Xceed Zip Compression Library 5.1?

Delivers speed improvements between 25% and 75% in certain contexts when dealing with a large number of files.


What's New in Xceed Zip Compression Library 5.0?

Added Zip64 and Deflate64 for compatibility with new PKZip v4.50 zip file format.

Overview

This high-performance Zip and Unzip data compression library lets your applications create and manipulate 100% PKZip compatible Zip files as well as compress/uncompress data directly in memory. It's designed to offer the ultimate in flexibility while being the easiest to use product of its kind. Includes a state-of-the-art, fully documented ActiveX COM component that provides the industry's most complete feature set and the fastest multi-threaded compression engine.

This ActiveX component supports both single-threaded (STA) and multi-threaded (MTA) apartment models and has very low memory requirements. It is perfectly suited for use in environments running multiple zip/unzip operations simultaneously, can run in the background and can be dynamically instantiated for formless use.

Xceed Zip has always been known for being superbly designed and easy to use. The latest version continues this tradition, and also offers categorized properties, built-in constants and enumerations, context-sensitive F1-help, optional parameters and built-in help strings.

With Xceed Zip, applications receive detailed information about the current compression activity, have full control over each file's information as it is being zipped and unzipped and can be consulted by the library when choices need to be made. There are twenty intelligently thought-out events that are triggered by component so your application is never in the dark and can manipulate the library in real-time.

Xceed Zip is 100% compatible with the latest PKZip 4.5 zip file format as well as the traditional 2.04g format, which is the most popular data compression format for Windows, and has wide acceptance on many other platforms as well. Files that are compressed using the latest Zip format can be extracted using any of today's popular unzipping applications.

Xceed Zip includes comprehensive online documentation that is packed with examples to help you accomplish your tasks effortlessly. Fully commented sample applications are included for many languages - with more are being added continuously. You can copy examples from the help file or samples, paste them into your project, and create a Zip files without writing a single line of code!

Xceed Zip includes complete sample applications, free expert support, and includes the multi-threaded ActiveX component, a DLL interface and an excellent 16-bit support package. It works with VB, VC++,Delphi, C++Builder, Visual FoxPro, ASP, VB Script, and most any other

32-bit Windows development environments.

FEATURES

ActiveX technology

• A single fully self-contained COM object and ActiveX control written with ATL 3.0
• Requires no external compression DLLs, MFC DLLs or runtime libraries
• Both single-threaded (STA) and multi-threaded apartment (MTA) model design
• Instantiate the component dynamically without putting it on a form
• Supports multiple instances running simultaneously
• Supports both Unicode and Ansi in one single control. The library automatically uses Unicode API calls for best performance when running on Windows NT, 2000 and XP
• ActiveX control interface has all constants, enumerations and types built-in. Code completion, property categories, help strings and context-sensitive F1-help fully supported
• Works with all 32-bit development environments that can use ActiveX controls, including VB, VC++, Delphi, C++ Builder, VFP, Office, PB, VO, Web scripting languages, ASP and DCOM projects
• Also compatible with VB.NET and C#. For developers that require 100% managed code, check out Xceed Zip for .NET, our fully object-oriented Zip, Compression and FileSystem class library

Compression & Zip file technology

• Fast, low memory usage compression engine
• 100% compatible with the existing PKZip 2.04g format
• 100% compatible with the new PKZIP 4.5 format
• Supports the Zip64 zip file format allowing the creation of Zip files of practically unlimited size (no more 4 GB limit)
• Supports the BZip2 (BWT) compression method for 15 to 20% better compression than Deflate on many popular file types, especially XML data
• BZip2 compression method is excellent for compressing XML data
• Supports the Deflate64 compression method, an industry standard improvement to regular Deflate
• Zip files can contain any number of files (no more 65535 file limit)
• Regular, spanned and self-extracting zip files created by Xceed Zip can be used by any of today's existing unzipping applications, and vice-versa
• Stores and retrieves the latest zip file format extensions, allowing Unicode filenames and NT file attributes, extra time stamps and security permissions to be stored in the zip file
• No need to repair corrupted zip files. Xceed Zip automatically tries to recover from errors and reports any inconsistencies found in the zip file while unzipping

Major operations

• Zip files or memory buffers into new or existing zip files
• Unzip files to disk or directly to memory
• Compress and decompress strings or buffers completely in memory
• All compression and decompression modes support streaming and encryption
• Create fully customized self-extracting zip files with the optional Self-Extractor Module
• Convert any type of zip file (regular, spanned, multi-part, self-extracting or spanned self-extracting) into any other type of zip file
• Reads and writes zip files that span multiple disks
• Reads and writes multi-part zip files directly to hard drive
• Update one zip file from another one's contents or merge two zip files together
• Optional background processing so your code can continue execution while Xceed Zip is working

Application-component interactivity

• All operations can be aborted at any time
• Provides status report events on a file-by-file basis as well as on the entire operation being performed, with percentages, byte and file counts. Easily add any kind of progress bar to your apps
• Events are triggered whenever a file is being zipped, unzipped, updated, deleted, etc
• Notifies your application when and why a specific file cannot be processed
• Notifies your application when a file being zipped or unzipped is about to overwrite an existing file. Your application can then choose to overwrite it or skip it. You can also rename files
• Provides complete file information for the current file being processed
• Your application receives info such as a file's achieved compression ratio, compressed size and other info as it becomes available
• Informs your application that it should prompt the user to insert a specific disk reading or writing zip files that span multiple disks
• Many events have modifyable parameters to allow your application to change file parameters or specifications as the files are being zipped, unzipped, converted, etc
• Unused events can be prevented from being triggered for increased performance
• Provide feedback to the user when the temporary zip file is being copied to its final destination
• Provide feedback to the user when the zip file's central directory is being written

Zip file manipulation functionality

• Obtain global information on a zip file
• Obtain a detailed list of a zip file's contents via a collection object
• Obtain a detailed list of a zip file's contents via events
• Delete files from within a zip file
• Delete files after they have been successfully and verifyably zipped
• Test the integrity of a zip file and its contents
• Process or exclude files based on file attributes, sizes, version resources and dates - or create your own custom include/exclude filters
• Wildcard previewing - find out exactly which files will match your wildcards and filters before you start zipping or unzipping
• Compression previewing - obtain the compressed file sizes before starting the actual zipping operation. Statistics on the entire group of files to be zipped are also provided
• Add and retrieve comments for individual files in the zip file
• Get and set the global zip file comment
• Automatic full yield so other applications do not halt during processing
• Clear disks before writing the zip file to them
• Specify the amount of free space to leave on the first disk of a spanned zip file set
• Reject disks without specified amount of free space on them when spanning
• Compress entire directories and their contents
• Process only files newer than those already in the zip file or existing on disk
• Provide global encryption and decryption passwords or on a file-by-file basis
• Control which types of files are stored in the zip file without compression
• Control what path information is stored in the zip file for each file
• Store a drive's volume label in the zip file and restore it during unzipping
• Zip up system and hidden files, overwrite read-only files
• Allow zipping files that are currently open for write operations by other process
• Limit operation to files with timestamps and file sizes within specified ranges
• Supports long filenames, UNC paths and stores Unicode filenames in the zip file
• Manipulate self-extracting zip files without disturbing their self-extracting ability
• Rename files and their paths as they are being zipped or unzipped
• Rename files in a zip file
• Change file parameters (comment, time stamps, file attributes) in a zip file
• Control the amount of compression applied to files being zipped
• Specify the path where files will be uncompressed to
• Specify files to process using wildcards
• Work on temporary copies of zip files, for maximum safety
• Specify the location of where temp files are created
• Filter out files during a zip file update, merge or conversion based on any file attributes or parameters
• Set the date of the archive file to the most recent date among the files it contains

Documentation and samples

• The complete documentation is available both as a printable MS Word document as well as a fully context-sensitive .hlp file that opens to the right topic when you press F1 on a keyword in your editor
• Fully commented sample applications for various languages, including VB, Delphi, Visual C++ with ATL and MFC, C++ Builder and Active Server Pages

Direct DLL API access

• The library's single DLL can also be accessed as a standard 32-bit DLL through it's exported API
• All properties, methods and events are exported
• All exported API calls involving string parameters come in single, wide character and Unicode versions
• Events can be handled either by callback functions or by windows messages