Supported Features β’ Getting Started β’ Download β’ Requirements β’ Building & Using β’ Donate β’ License
bit7z is a cross-platform C++ static library that allows the compression/extraction of archive files through a clean and simple wrapper interface to the dynamic libraries from the 7-zip project.
It supports compression and extraction to and from the filesystem or the memory, reading archives metadata, updating existing ones, creating multi-volume archives, operation progress callbacks, and many other functionalities.
- Compression using the following archive formats: 7z, XZ, BZIP2, GZIP, TAR, ZIP, and WIM.
- Extraction of many archive formats: 7z, AR, ARJ, BZIP2, CAB, CHM, CPIO, CramFS, DEB, DMG, EXT, FAT, GPT, GZIP, HFS, HXS, IHEX, ISO, LZH, LZMA, MBR, MSI, NSIS, NTFS, QCOW2, RAR, RAR5, RPM, SquashFS, TAR, UDF, UEFI, VDI, VHD, VMDK, WIM, XAR, XZ, Z, and ZIP.
- Reading metadata of archives and their content.
- Testing archives for errors.
- Updating existing file archives with new files.
- Renaming, updating, or deleting old items in existing file archives.
- Compression and extraction to and from memory and C++ standard streams.
- Compression using custom path aliases for the items in the output archives.
- Selective extraction of only specified files/folders using wildcards and regular expressions.
- Creation of encrypted archives (strong AES-256 encryption β only for 7z and ZIP formats).
- Archive header encryption (only for 7z format).
- Possibility to choose the compression level (if supported by the archive format), the compression method (supported methods), the dictionary size, and the word size.
- Automatic input archive format detection.
- Solid archives (only for 7z).
- Multi-volume archives.
- Operation callbacks for obtaining real-time information about ongoing operations.
- Canceling or pausing the current operation.
The presence or not of some of the above features depends on the particular shared library used along with bit7z.
For example, 7z.dll should support all these features, 7za.dll should work only with the 7z file format, and 7zxa.dll can only extract 7z files. For more information about the 7-zip DLLs, please check this wiki page.
In the end, some other features (e.g., automatic format detection and selective extraction using regular expressions) are disabled by default, and macro definitions must be used during compilation to have them available (wiki).
Below are a few examples that show how to use some of the main features of bit7z.
#include <bit7z/bitfileextractor.hpp>
try { // bit7z classes can throw BitException objects
using namespace bit7z;
Bit7zLibrary lib{ "7za.dll" };
BitFileExtractor extractor{ lib, BitFormat::SevenZip };
// Extracting a simple archive
extractor.extract( "path/to/archive.7z", "out/dir/" );
// Extracting a specific file
extractor.extractMatching( "path/to/archive.7z", "file.pdf", "out/dir/" );
// Extracting the first file of an archive to a buffer
std::vector< byte_t > buffer;
extractor.extract( "path/to/archive.7z", buffer );
// Extracting an encrypted archive
extractor.setPassword( "password" );
extractor.extract( "path/to/another/archive.7z", "out/dir/" );
} catch ( const bit7z::BitException& ex ) { /* Do something with ex.what()...*/ }
Alternatively, if you only need to work on a single archive:
#include <bit7z/bitarchivereader.hpp>
try { // bit7z classes can throw BitException objects
using namespace bit7z;
Bit7zLibrary lib{ "7z.dll" };
// Opening the archive
BitArchiveReader reader{lib, "path/to/archive.gz", BitFormat::GZip };
// Testing the archive
reader.test();
// Extracting the archive
reader.extract( "out/dir/" );
} catch ( const bit7z::BitException& ex ) { /* Do something with ex.what()...*/ }
#include <bit7z/bitfilecompressor.hpp>
try { // bit7z classes can throw BitException objects
using namespace bit7z;
Bit7zLibrary lib{ "7z.dll" };
BitFileCompressor compressor{ lib, BitFormat::Zip };
std::vector< std::string > files = { "path/to/file1.jpg", "path/to/file2.pdf" };
// Creating a simple zip archive
compressor.compress( files, "output_archive.zip" );
// Creating a zip archive with a custom directory structure
std::map< std::string, std::string > files_map = {
{ "path/to/file1.jpg", "alias/path/file1.jpg" },
{ "path/to/file2.pdf", "alias/path/file2.pdf" }
};
compressor.compress( files_map, "output_archive2.zip" );
// Compressing a directory
compressor.compressDirectory( "dir/path/", "dir_archive.zip" );
// Creating an encrypted zip archive of two files
compressor.setPassword( "password" );
compressor.compressFiles( files, "protected_archive.zip" );
// Updating an existing zip archive
compressor.setUpdateMode( UpdateMode::Append );
compressor.compressFiles( files, "existing_archive.zip" );
// Compressing a single file into a buffer
std::vector< bit7z::byte_t > buffer;
BitFileCompressor compressor2{ lib, BitFormat::BZip2 };
compressor2.compressFile( files[0], buffer );
} catch ( const bit7z::BitException& ex ) { /* Do something with ex.what()...*/ }
Alternatively, if you only need to work on a single archive:
#include <bit7z/bitarchivewriter.hpp>
try { // bit7z classes can throw BitException objects
using namespace bit7z;
Bit7zLibrary lib{ "7z.dll" };
BitArchiveWriter writer{lib, BitFormat::SevenZip };
// Adding the items to be compressed (no compression is performed here)
writer.addFile( "path/to/file.txt" );
writer.addDirectory( "path/to/dir/" );
// Compressing the added items to the output archive
writer.compressTo( "output.7z" );
} catch ( const bit7z::BitException& ex ) { /* Do something with ex.what()...*/ }
#include <bit7z/bitarchivereader.hpp>
try { // bit7z classes can throw BitException objects
using namespace bit7z;
Bit7zLibrary lib{ "7za.dll" };
BitArchiveReader arc{ lib, "archive.7z", BitFormat::SevenZip };
// Printing archive metadata
std::cout << "Archive properties" << std::endl;
std::cout << " Items count: " << arc.itemsCount() << std::endl;
std::cout << " Folders count: " << arc.foldersCount() << std::endl;
std::cout << " Files count: " << arc.filesCount() << std::endl;
std::cout << " Size: " << arc.size() << std::endl;
std::cout << " Packed size: " << arc.packSize() << std::endl;
std::cout << std::endl;
// Printing the metadata of the archived items
std::cout << "Archived items";
auto arc_items = arc.items();
for ( auto& item : arc_items ) {
std::cout << std::endl;
std::cout << " Item index: " << item.index() << std::endl;
std::cout << " Name: " << item.name() << std::endl;
std::cout << " Extension: " << item.extension() << std::endl;
std::cout << " Path: " << item.path() << std::endl;
std::cout << " IsDir: " << item.isDir() << std::endl;
std::cout << " Size: " << item.size() << std::endl;
std::cout << " Packed size: " << item.packSize() << std::endl;
std::cout << " CRC: " << item.crc() << std::endl;
}
} catch ( const bit7z::BitException& ex ) { /* Do something with ex.what()...*/ }
A complete API reference is available in the wiki section.
Expand for more details!
The newest bit7z v4 introduced some significant breaking changes to the API. In particular:
- By default, the project now follows the UTF-8 Everywhere Manifesto:
- The default string type is
std::string
(instead ofstd::wstring
), so users can use the library in cross-platform projects more easily (v4 introduced Linux/macOS support too). - Input
std::string
s will be considered as UTF-8 encoded. - You can still achieve the old behavior on Windows using the
-DBIT7Z_USE_NATIVE_STRING
CMake option.
- The default string type is
- The old
BitExtractor
class is now calledBitFileExtractor
.- Now
BitExtractor
is just the name of a template class for all the extraction classes.
- Now
- The old
BitCompressor
class is now calledBitFileCompressor
.- Now
BitCompressor
is just the name of a template class for all the compression classes.
- Now
- The
ProgressCallback
now must return abool
value indicating whether the current operation can continue (true
) or not (false
).
Each released package contains:
- A pre-compiled version of bit7z (both in debug and release mode);
- The public API headers needed to use the library in your program;
Packages are available for both x86 and x64 architectures.
You can also clone/download this repository and build the library by yourself (please, read the wiki).
- Operating System: Windows, Linux, macOS1.
- Architecture: x86, x86_64.
- Compiler: MSVC 2015 or later2, MinGW v6.4 or later, GCC v4.9 or later, Clang 3.5 or later.
- Shared Library: a 7-zip
.dll
library on Windows, a 7-zip/p7zip.so
library on Unix3.
For building the library:
cd <bit7z folder>
mkdir build && cd build
cmake ../ -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release
cmake --build . -j --config Release
A more detailed guide on how to build this library is available here.
You can directly integrate the library into your project via CMake:
- Download bit7z and copy it into a sub-directory of your project (e.g.,
third_party
), or add it as a git submodule of your repository. - You can then use the command
add_subdirectory()
in yourCMakeLists.txt
to include bit7z. - Finally, add the
bit7z64
target (justbit7z
on x86) using thetarget_link_libraries()
command.
For example:
add_subdirectory( ${CMAKE_SOURCE_DIR}/third_party/bit7z )
target_link_libraries( ${TARGET_NAME} PRIVATE bit7z64 ) # or bit7z on x86
If you have found this project helpful, please consider supporting me with a small donation so that I can keep improving it! Thank you! π
This project is licensed under the terms of the Mozilla Public License v2.0.
For more details, please check:
- The LICENSE file.
- Mozilla's MPL-2.0 FAQ
Older versions (v3.x and earlier) of bit7z were released under the GNU General Public License v2.
Footnotes
-
On Windows, you should link your program also with oleaut32 (e.g.,
-lbit7z -loleaut32
).
On Linux and macOS, you should link your program also with dl (e.g.,-lbit7z -ldl
).
If you are using the library via CMake, these dependencies will be linked automatically to your project. β© -
MSVC 2010 was supported until v2.x, MSVC 2012/2013 until v3.x. β©
-
bit7z doesn't ship with the 7-zip shared libraries. You can build them from the source code available at 7-zip.org. β©