Extracting items from a zip file (unzipping)

This topic demonstrates how to extract files and folders from a zip file to a destination folder. With Xceed Zip for .NET, a folder is a folder; it does not matter if it is located within a zip file, on disk or in memory.

When unzipping the contents of a spanned zip file, the last disk must be in the drive before the operation begins (when the instance of the ZipArchive class has been created).

Basic steps

To extract items from a zip file, the following steps must be performed:

Retrieve a reference to a new or existing zip file using the ZipArchive class.
Retrieve a reference to a folder where the files will be extracted to using either the DiskFolder, ZippedFolder, ZipArchive, MemoryFolder or IsolatedFolder classes.
Call the CopyFilesTo method to copy the entire contents of the zip to the destination folder.

Demonstration

This example demonstrates how to unzip files from a zip file to a folder located on disk.

VB.NET Copy Code

VB.NET	Copy Code
`Imports Xceed.Zip Imports Xceed.FileSystem` `Dim zip As New ZipArchive( New DiskFile( "c:\test.zip" ) ) Dim folder As New DiskFolder( "c:\temp" )` `zip.CopyFilesTo( folder, true, true )`

Imports Xceed.Zip Imports Xceed.FileSystem

Dim zip As New ZipArchive( New DiskFile( "c:\test.zip" ) ) Dim folder As New DiskFolder( "c:\temp" )

zip.CopyFilesTo( folder, true, true )

C# Copy Code

C#	Copy Code
`using Xceed.Zip; using Xceed.FileSystem;` `ZipArchive zip = new ZipArchive( new DiskFile( @"c:\test.zip" ) ); DiskFolder folder = new DiskFolder( @"c:\temp" );` `zip.CopyFilesTo( folder, true, true );`

using Xceed.Zip; using Xceed.FileSystem;

ZipArchive zip = new ZipArchive( new DiskFile( @"c:\test.zip" ) ); DiskFolder folder = new DiskFolder( @"c:\temp" );

zip.CopyFilesTo( folder, true, true );

Things you should consider

The main questions you should ask yourself when extracting items from a zip file are:

Do you want to filter (specify specific files and folders) the items that are to be unzipped? Use filters.
Do you want to display the status of the operation? See the Events topic.
Do you only want to copy a specific file or folder? Use the CopyTo method.
Do you want to move items rather than copy them? Use the MoveTo and MoveFilesTo methods.
Do you only want to do basic zip file operations? Use the QuickZip class.