download github zip file and display contents in web app

Question

How would you display the contents of a github zip file and display the contents in a web application with the correct file structure?

Could I somehow insert the zip file into the database and then print the contents onto a webpage instead of scraping every single file?

Answer 1

Making the assumption that you are trying to build a view of the contents of the zipfile similar to Githubs representation, after uploading said zipfile to your server, the easiest way would be to:

1. Use RubyZip Zip::ZipFile to access the uploaded Zipfile (how to store it as file db depends on your needs).
2. Store the contents in a nested hash and display said hash in a view. The hash can then include drill down links to the extracted files.

To give you a simple example stub how to parse the file (e.g. named test.zip)

Zip::ZipFile.open("test.zip") do |zipfile|            
  zipfile.each do |entry|
    # Do something with the enty / create your hash like you need it
  end
end

You can find more details in the documentation.

HTH