mod_ziplook

ZIP-file viewer module for Apache 1.3.X
mod_ziplook2 for apache-2.0.
Status: beta (but works).
Current: mod_ziplook-2002.08.07.tar.gz
Olds: mod_ziplook-2002.02.26.tar.gz
ziplook-2002.02.22-b.tar.gz

Author: jukka pihl
email: jukka.pihl@iki.fi

News 2003.03.17

- mod_ziplook2 for apache-2.0.

News 2002.08.07

- Simpler Accept-Encoding handling

- ziplook note for logging puposes. You can put %{ziplook}n to your log-format.

News 2002.02.26

- If http-client understands gzip 'Accept-Encoding: gzip,x-gzip' and file is 'deflate'-compressed, file is sent back in gzip- format. Major performance advantage.

What is it?

With mod_ziplook apache module you can view zip-archive files directly in apache without extracting them to filesystem.
It's usefull with large documentation zip-files which are not very often hit.

Module uses miniunzip - unzip library and that uses zlib

Features

Whole directory structure of ZIP-file can be seen.
Separate files can be seen easily (/xxxx.zip/dir/afile.html)
In case of directories index.html is looked. (/y/x.zip/dir/ => /y/x.zip/dir/index.html)
Handles If-Modified-Since and NotModified-status
If your browser supports gzip content-encoding and documents in ZIP-archive are "Deflate"-compressed: module changes files to gzip format in fly. This makes things very fast (and server cpu & network capasity is saved)

Example

(This doesn't work currently because this httpd-server runs now Apache-2)

In this directory I have one small zip-file "zip_form.zip", which is can be viewed with this module.

zip_form.zip - whole zip archive
zip_form.zip/zip.txtone file from there

History

Sun Java SDK 1.4 came middle of feb-2002. I installed it and it's documentation to my home machine which had not very much empty space left in hard-disk. It had big documentation zip-file (31M), for which I couldn't find enough room without removing some older stuff.
I got idea that it would be nice to have apache-module that can read zip-files in fly.
After few evenings (and part of days) here is a little module.

Install and config

- Module needs zlib in your computer


   A. Open tar.gz - file.

   B. find your apxs (apache module handling script)

   C. Compile  (with zlib)

       apxs  -c  mod_ziplook.c  -lz

   D. Run installing script (as root is needed)

       apxs -i -a mod_ziplook.so

   E. Add handler to for 'zip'-files  in httpd.conf
      (look mod_mime.c section)

      AddHandler ziplook zip


   F. Restart your apache

   G. Seek an zip-file and try with it.

       http://your.host/directory/myzipfile.zip
       http://your.host/directory/myzipfile.zip/a-file-in-zip-file.html

Todo

- Make Apache-2.0 version

- Memory leaks must be checked

- Some configuration directives could be fine

- Fetching zip-file as whole

- Seeing zip-directories as separate entities (not just one big directory listing)

- index.html system is hardcoded

Thanks to ...

Gilles Vollant (author unzip-library) for giving ideas and support

All ideas are wellcome.