Unzipping to a variable - php

Question

I need to process the contents of a zipped file, but I can't change the permissions on the server where my program will be hosted.
This means that I can't download the zip file to the server, so I need to read the contents of the file into a variable without writing it to the file system.
Can I grab the string contents of such variable and get the unzipped contents into a new variable?
So far, I've looked into using the zip php extension, and the pclzip library, but both need to use actual files.
This is what I want to do in pseudo code:
$contentsOfMyZipFile = ZipFileToString();
$myUnzippedContents = libUnzip($contentsOfMyZipFile);
Any ideas?

Answer 1

Look at this example.
<?php
$open = zip_open($file);
if (is_numeric($open)) {
echo "Zip Open Error #: $open";
} else {
while($zip = zip_read($open)) {
zip_entry_open($zip);
$text = zip_entry_read($zip , zip_entry_filesize($zip));
zip_entry_close($zip);
}
print_r($text);
?>

Answer 2

I use this in my project:
function unzip_file( $data ) {
//save in tmp zip data
$zipname = "/tmp/file_xxx.zip";
$handle = fopen($zipname, "w");
fwrite($handle, $data);
fclose($handle);
//then open and read it.
$open = zip_open($zipname);
if (is_numeric($open)) {
echo "Zip Open Error #: $open";
} else {
while ($zip = zip_read($open)) {
zip_entry_open($zip);
$text = zip_entry_read($zip, zip_entry_filesize($zip));
zip_entry_close($zip);
}
}
/*delete tmp file and return variable with data(in this case plaintext)*/
unlink($zipname);
return $text;
}
I hope it helps you.