RB-libarchive: A REALbasic repository from charonn0

Introduction

libarchive is a cross-platform multi-format archive and compression library. RB-libarchive is a libarchive binding for Realbasic and Xojo ("classic" framework) projects. Library binaries for various platforms are available, or can be built from source.

The minimum supported libarchive version is 3.3.3. The minimum supported Xojo version is RS2010R4.

Example

This example extracts an archive into a folder. More examples.

  Dim src As FolderItem = GetOpenFolderItem("")
  Dim dst As FolderItem = SelectFolder()
  Dim lst() As libarchive.ArchiveEntry = libarchive.ReadArchive(src, dst)

Highlights

Create and extract any archive format supported by libarchive¹.
Read and write encrypted archives².
Read and write any compression format supported by libarchive¹.
64-bit ready.

¹ Some formats are read-only; a few are write-only.
² Zip archives only.

Become a sponsor

If you use this code in a commercial project, or just want to show your appreciation, please consider sponsoring me through GitHub. https://github.com/sponsors/charonn0

Synopsis

The libarchive API is abstracted over by several object classes:

Object Class	Comment
`ArchiveReader`	An archive opened for extraction.
`ArchiveWriter`	An archive opened for archiving.
`ArchiveEntry`	The metadata of a single entry in an archive.
`CompressedStream`	A `BinaryStream` workalike for reading and writing compressed streams.

An archive is represented by an instance of ArchiveReader or ArchiveWriter, or a format-specific subclass of these classes. For most purposes you can use the OpenArchive, OpenAsArchive, and ReadArchive convenience methods to extract an existing archive; and the CreateArchive, CreateAsArchive, and WriteArchive convenience methods to generate a new archive.

How to incorporate libcarchive into your Realbasic/Xojo project

Import the libarchive module

Download the RB-libarchive project either in ZIP archive format or by cloning the repository with your Git client.
Open the RB-libarchive project in REALstudio or Xojo. Open your project in a separate window.
Copy the libarchive module into your project and save.

Ensure the libarchive shared library is installed

libarchive might be not installed by default on some operating systems, in which case you will need to either install the libarchive package from the OS vendor or ship the necessary files with your application.

Windows: 32-bit and 64-bit DLLs
macOS: 32-bit and 64-bit dylibs (untested; might not be needed. Be sure to update the libarchive.libpath constant to point to this file.)
Linux: Install the libarchive-13 (or equivalent) package through the system package manager if it is not already installed.

RB-libarchive will raise a PlatformNotSupportedException when used if all required DLLs/SOs/DyLibs are not available at runtime.

charonn0/RB-libarchive