How to archive and compress data with "PhysicsFS"

Question

I'm looking in "PhysicsFS" documentation and search for way to archive and compress data but can't find.Is it possible and if it is how i can do that

Answer 1

PhysicsFS zip support

PhysicsFS has support for reading files from a zip file mounted at an arbitrary point in the "virtual filesystem" that it provide. This effectively provide decompression from a ZIP archive.

However, PhysicsFS has no support to add or modify the content of a ZIP archive. It only permit to write uncompressed files in what is called "the write directory" in its documentation.

So, to summarize: PhysicsFS only support reading from ZIP archives, not writing to it. For the compression you are on your own: just zip all the written files using an external compressor if you need so.

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PhysicsFS usage

There is a small tutorial for PhysicsFS here.

It is very simple to use:

// initialize the lib
PHYSFS_init(NULL);

// "mount" a zip file in the root directory
PHYSFS_AddToSearchPath("myzip.zip", 1);

// set a directory for writing
PHYSFS_setWriteDir(const char *newDir);

// open a file for reading
PHYSFS_file* myfile = PHYSFS_openRead("myfile.txt");

// open a file for writing
PHYSFS_file* myfile = PHYSFS_openWrite("output_file.bin");

// get a file size
PHYSFS_sint64 file_size = PHYSFS_fileLength(myfile);

// read data from a file (decompress only if path is inside a zip mount point)
char* myBuf = new char[file_size];
int length_readed = PHYSFS_read(myfile, myBuf, 1, file_size);

// write data to a file (uncompressed)
char* myBuf = new char[new_file_size];
//...fill myBuf...
int length_writed = PHYSFS_write(myfile, myBuf, 1, new_file_size);

// close a file
PHYSFS_close(myfile);

// deinitialize the lib
PHYSFS_deinit();