# Creating a ZIP archive purely in memory? **URL:** \ **Category:** Rails\ **Created:** [November 17, 2005, 1:08am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/creating-a-zip-archive-purely-in-memory/48397 "2005-11-17T01:08:47Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![michael](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/4bbf92/32.png) [@michael](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/michael)\ **Post date:** [November 17, 2005, 1:08am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/creating-a-zip-archive-purely-in-memory/48397/1 "2005-11-17T01:08:47Z")
Has someone devised a way to create a ZIP archive purely in memory? I know of rubyzip, but apparently it can only create an archive as a file. That’s not too bad, but if I can I’d prefer to do this in memory. Michael – Michael S. They tell you that the darkness [mailto:removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) Is a blessing in disguise [Michael Schürig | Sentenced to making sense](http://www.schuerig.de/michael/) --Janis Ian, From Me To You ---
**Author:** ![michael](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/4bbf92/32.png) [@michael](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/michael)\ **Post date:** [November 17, 2005, 1:26am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/creating-a-zip-archive-purely-in-memory/48397/2 "2005-11-17T01:26:53Z")
Out of curiosity, why? If you want to work around it, you can mount a ramdisk and zip to a file in that… or perhaps look at FuseFS ([http://rubyforge.org/projects/fusefs/](http://rubyforge.org/projects/fusefs/)) if you want to roll your own… Alternatively you could just use ZLib, but I assume you want zip for a reason… Cheers! -DF ---
**Author:** ![michael](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/4bbf92/32.png) [@michael](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/michael)\ **Post date:** [November 17, 2005, 1:32am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/creating-a-zip-archive-purely-in-memory/48397/3 "2005-11-17T01:32:54Z")
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On Nov 16, 2005, at 4:25 PM, David F. wrote: > On 11/17/05, Michael S. [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote: > > > Has someone devised a way to create a ZIP archive purely in memory? I > > know of rubyzip, but apparently it can only create an archive as a > > file. That’s not too bad, but if I can I’d prefer to do this in > > memory. > > Out of curiosity, why? I guess he’s dynamically generating a zipfile for his users to download. e.g. download all posts from the past month. jeremy -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.2 (Darwin) iD8DBQFDe88TAQHALep9HFYRAnAqAKCXdX2GHMP3zhHJIvaoAJRwESMRDQCghqHF jtogVZGjstVd2rQLiatrEOk= =cafG -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- ---
**Author:** ![michael](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/4bbf92/32.png) [@michael](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/michael)\ **Post date:** [November 17, 2005, 2:18am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/creating-a-zip-archive-purely-in-memory/48397/4 "2005-11-17T02:18:05Z")
On Thursday 17 November 2005 01:30, Jeremy K. wrote: > download. > Exactly. Doing this in memory and then send\_data’ing would just be more > convenient than creating a temporary file and using send\_file on it. Michael – Michael S. There is no matrix, [mailto:removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) only reality. [Michael Schürig | Sentenced to making sense](http://www.schuerig.de/michael/) --Lawrence Fishburn ---
**Author:** ![michael](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/4bbf92/32.png) [@michael](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/michael)\ **Post date:** [December 12, 2006, 9:51am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/creating-a-zip-archive-purely-in-memory/48397/5 "2006-12-12T09:51:57Z")
Did anyone ever come up with a way of doing this (other than using chilkats zip library)? Thanks P ---
**Author:** ![michael](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/4bbf92/32.png) [@michael](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/michael)\ **Post date:** [December 12, 2006, 1:47pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/creating-a-zip-archive-purely-in-memory/48397/6 "2006-12-12T13:47:57Z")
[http://www.rubyonrailsblog.com/articles/2006/11/07/zipping-and-unzipping-multiple-directories-using-rubyzip](http://www.rubyonrailsblog.com/articles/2006/11/07/zipping-and-unzipping-multiple-directories-using-rubyzip) what about that ?