bit7z

⚡️ Introduction

bit7z is a cross-platform C++ static library that allows the compression/extraction of archive files through a clean and simple wrapper interface to the dynamic libraries from the 7-Zip project. It supports compression and extraction to and from the filesystem or the memory, reading archives metadata, updating existing ones, creating multi-volume archives, operation progress callbacks, and many other functionalities.

🎯 Supported Features

• Compression using the following archive formats: 7z, XZ, BZIP2, GZIP, TAR, ZIP, and WIM.
• Extraction of many archive formats: 7z, AR, ARJ, BZIP2, CAB, CHM, CPIO, CramFS, DEB, DMG, EXT, FAT, GPT, GZIP, HFS, HXS, IHEX, ISO, LZH, LZMA, MBR, MSI, NSIS, NTFS, QCOW2, RAR, RAR5, RPM, SquashFS, TAR, UDF, UEFI, VDI, VHD, VMDK, WIM, XAR, XZ, Z, and ZIP.
• Reading metadata of archives and their content.
• Testing archives for errors.
• Updating existing file archives with new files.
• Renaming, updating, or deleting old items in existing file archives.
• Compression and extraction to and from memory and C++ standard streams.
• Compression using custom path aliases for the items in the output archives.
• Selective extraction of only specified files/folders using wildcards and regular expressions.
• Selective extraction of folders, and extraction of an archive's root folder content.
• Renaming the extracted items via a callback.
• Reading raw extracted data through a callback.
• Reading and extracting nested and sub-archives without writing the intermediate files.
• Creation of encrypted archives (strong AES-256 encryption; only for 7z and ZIP formats).
• Archive header encryption (only for 7z format).
• Possibility to choose the compression level (if supported by the archive format), the compression method (supported methods), the dictionary size, and the word size.
• Automatic input archive format detection.
• Opening self-extracting (SFX) archives and executables with appended data.
• Deferred loading of the 7-Zip shared library.
• Solid archives (only for 7z).
• Multi-volume archives.
• Operation callbacks for obtaining real-time information about ongoing operations.
• Canceling or pausing the current operation.

[!NOTE]

The presence or not of some of the above features depends on the specific 7-Zip shared library used.

For example, 7z.dll should support all these features, 7za.dll should work only with the 7z file format, and 7zxa.dll can only extract 7z files.

For more information about the 7-Zip DLLs, please check this wiki page.

[!NOTE]

Some features (e.g., automatic format detection and selective extraction using regular expressions) are disabled by default, and macro definitions must be used during compilation to have them available (wiki).

🔥 Getting Started (Library Usage)

Below are a few examples that show how to use some of the main features of bit7z.

📂 Extracting Files from an Archive

#include <bit7z/bitfileextractor.hpp>

try { // bit7z classes can throw BitException objects
    using namespace bit7z;

    Bit7zLibrary lib{ "7za.dll" };
    BitFileExtractor extractor{ lib, BitFormat::SevenZip };

    // Extracting a simple archive
    extractor.extract( "path/to/archive.7z", "out/dir/" );

    // Extracting a specific file inside an archive
    extractor.extractMatching( "path/to/archive.7z", "file.pdf", "out/dir/" );

    // Extracting the first file of an archive to a buffer
    std::vector< byte_t > buffer;
    extractor.extract( "path/to/archive.7z", buffer );

    // Extracting an encrypted archive
    extractor.setPassword( "password" );
    extractor.extract( "path/to/another/archive.7z", "out/dir/" );
} catch ( const bit7z::BitException& ex ) { /* Do something with ex.what()...*/ }

Alternatively, if you only need to work on a single archive:

#include <bit7z/bitarchivereader.hpp>

try { // bit7z classes can throw BitException objects
    using namespace bit7z;

    Bit7zLibrary lib{ "7z.dll" };

    // Opening the archive
    BitArchiveReader archive{ lib, "path/to/archive.gz", BitFormat::GZip };

    // Testing the archive
    archive.test();

    // Extracting the archive
    archive.extractTo( "out/dir/" );
} catch ( const bit7z::BitException& ex ) { /* Do something with ex.what()...*/ }

💼 Compressing Files into an Archive

#include <bit7z/bitfilecompressor.hpp>

try { // bit7z classes can throw BitException objects
    using namespace bit7z;

    Bit7zLibrary lib{ "7z.dll" };
    BitFileCompressor compressor{ lib, BitFormat::Zip };

    std::vector< std::string > files = { "path/to/file1.jpg", "path/to/file2.pdf" };

    // Creating a simple zip archive
    compressor.compress( files, "output_archive.zip" );