[FeatureRequest] Buffer or UInt8Array for input

[jedwards1211]

Someone was saying in #97 that consuming a stream isn't really feasible because metadata is at the end of the file. But it would be nice to be able to at least read a Buffer, because I'd like to use this to read small zip files sent via HTTP form upload without having to save them to disk.

[gowin20]

@antelle any plans to add Buffer support? I am creating a large zip of images using sharp and need to access them directly without saving to disk.

[simonpai]

There is a way to work around. The idea is quite simple:

1. Use StreamZip.setFs() to make it use a custom fs internally.
2. Use memfs to write a Buffer as a file.

Here's the sample code:

import StreamZip from 'node-stream-zip';
import { createFsFromVolume, Volume } from 'memfs';
import { Union } from 'unionfs';

// setup
const volume = new Volume();
const memFs = createFsFromVolume(volume).promises;
const ufs = new Union();
ufs.use(fs).use(volume);
let memFileIndex = 0;
StreamZip.setFs(ufs);

async function readZipFromBuffer(buffer, callback) {
  const file = `/file_${memFileIndex++}.zip`;
  let zip;
  try {
    await memFs.writeFile(file, buffer);
    zip = new StreamZip.async({ file });
    return await callback(zip);
  } finally {
    if (zip) {
      await zip.close();
    }
    await memFs.unlink(file);
  }
}

// usage
const data = await readZipFromBuffer(buffer, async (zip) => {
  // ... do whatever with zip
  // return ...
});

Some references:

• unionfs
• memfs

[jedwards1211]

That's a pretty drastic workaround...I'd prefer to be able to pass a buffer directly to node-stream-zip. Clever idea though

[simonpai]

That's a pretty drastic workaround...I'd prefer to be able to pass a buffer directly to node-stream-zip. Clever idea though

Yeah, I hope for the same thing but this project seems to be inactive for a few years now. Alternatively we could've forked the project and make it accept a Buffer, yet I believe an implementation with the same memfs approach would still be the shortest path given how much node-stream-zip is coupled with fs.