Go to main content

man pages section 3: Extended Library Functions, Volume 1

Exit Print View

Updated: Wednesday, July 27, 2022
 
 

archive_read (3archive)

Name

archive_read - functions for reading streaming archives

Synopsis

#include <archive.h>

Description

ARCHIVE_READ(3archive)                                  ARCHIVE_READ(3archive)



NAME
       archive_read - functions for reading streaming archives

LIBRARY
       Streaming Archive Library (libarchive, -larchive)

SYNOPSIS
       #include <archive.h>

DESCRIPTION
       These functions provide a complete API for reading streaming archives.
       The general process is to first create the Tn struct archive object,
       set options, initialize the reader, iterate over the archive headers
       and associated data, then close the archive and release all resources.

   Create archive object
       See archive_read_new(3).

       To read an archive, you must first obtain an initialized Tn struct ar-
       chive object from archive_read_new().

   Enable filters and formats
       See archive_read_filter(3) and archive_read_format(3).

       You can then modify this object for the desired operations with the
       various archive_read_set_XXX() and archive_read_support_XXX() func-
       tions.  In particular, you will need to invoke appropriate
       archive_read_support_XXX() functions to enable the corresponding com-
       pression and format support.  Note that these latter functions perform
       two distinct operations: they cause the corresponding support code to
       be linked into your program, and they enable the corresponding auto-
       detect code.  Unless you have specific constraints, you will generally
       want to invoke archive_read_support_filter_all() and
       archive_read_support_format_all() to enable auto-detect for all formats
       and compression types currently supported by the library.

   Set options
       See archive_read_set_options(3).

   Open archive
       See archive_read_open(3).

       Once you have prepared the Tn struct archive object, you call
       archive_read_open() to actually open the archive and prepare it for
       reading.  There are several variants of this function; the most basic
       expects you to provide pointers to several functions that can provide
       blocks of bytes from the archive.  There are convenience forms that
       allow you to specify a filename, file descriptor, FILE * object, or a
       block of memory from which to read the archive data.  Note that the
       core library makes no assumptions about the size of the blocks read;
       callback functions are free to read whatever block size is most appro-
       priate for the medium.

   Consume archive
       See archive_read_header(3), archive_read_data(3) and ar-
       chive_read_extract(3).

       Each archive entry consists of a header followed by a certain amount of
       data.  You can obtain the next header with archive_read_next_header(),
       which returns a pointer to an Tn struct archive_entry structure with
       information about the current archive element.  If the entry is a regu-
       lar file, then the header will be followed by the file data.  You can
       use archive_read_data() (which works much like the read(2) system call)
       to read this data from the archive, or archive_read_data_block() which
       provides a slightly more efficient interface.  You may prefer to use
       the higher-level archive_read_data_skip(), which reads and discards the
       data for this entry, archive_read_data_into_fd(), which copies the data
       to the provided file descriptor, or archive_read_extract(), which
       recreates the specified entry on disk and copies data from the archive.
       In particular, note that archive_read_extract() uses the Tn struct ar-
       chive_entry structure that you provide it, which may differ from the
       entry just read from the archive.  In particular, many applications
       will want to override the pathname, file permissions, or ownership.

   Release resources
       See archive_read_free(3).

       Once you have finished reading data from the archive, you should call
       archive_read_close() to close the archive, then call
       archive_read_free() to release all resources, including all memory
       allocated by the library.

EXAMPLES
       The following illustrates basic usage of the library.  In this example,
       the callback functions are simply wrappers around the standard open(2),
       read(2), and close(2) system calls.
           void
           list_archive(const char *name)
           {
             struct mydata *mydata;
             struct archive *a;
             struct archive_entry *entry;
             mydata = malloc(sizeof(struct mydata));
             a = archive_read_new();
             mydata->name = name;
             archive_read_support_filter_all(a);
             archive_read_support_format_all(a);
             archive_read_open(a, mydata, myopen, myread, myclose);
             while (archive_read_next_header(a, &entry) == ARCHIVE_OK) {
               printf("%s\n",archive_entry_pathname(entry));
               archive_read_data_skip(a);
             }
             archive_read_free(a);
             free(mydata);
           }
           la_ssize_t
           myread(struct archive *a, void *client_data, const void **buff)
           {
             struct mydata *mydata = client_data;
             *buff = mydata->buff;
             return (read(mydata->fd, mydata->buff, 10240));
           }
           int
           myopen(struct archive *a, void *client_data)
           {
             struct mydata *mydata = client_data;
             mydata->fd = open(mydata->name, O_RDONLY);
             return (mydata->fd >= 0 ? ARCHIVE_OK : ARCHIVE_FATAL);
           }
           int
           myclose(struct archive *a, void *client_data)
           {
             struct mydata *mydata = client_data;
             if (mydata->fd > 0)
               close(mydata->fd);
             return (ARCHIVE_OK);
           }


ATTRIBUTES
       See attributes(7) for descriptions of the following attributes:


       +---------------+--------------------+
       |ATTRIBUTE TYPE |  ATTRIBUTE VALUE   |
       +---------------+--------------------+
       |Availability   | library/libarchive |
       +---------------+--------------------+
       |Stability      | Uncommitted        |
       +---------------+--------------------+

SEE ALSO
       tar(1), archive_read_data(3), archive_read_extract(3), ar-
       chive_read_filter(3), archive_read_format(3), archive_read_header(3),
       archive_read_new(3), archive_read_open(3), archive_read_set_options(3),
       archive_util(3), libarchive(3)

HISTORY
       The libarchive library first appeared in FreeBSD 5.3.

AUTHORS
       -nosplit The libarchive library was written by Tim Kientzle
       <kientzle@acm.org.>

BUGS
       Many traditional archiver programs treat empty files as valid empty ar-
       chives.  For example, many implementations of tar(1) allow you to
       append entries to an empty file.  Of course, it is impossible to deter-
       mine the format of an empty file by inspecting the contents, so this
       library treats empty files as having a special ``empty'' format.



NOTES
       Source code for open source software components in Oracle Solaris can
       be found at https://www.oracle.com/downloads/opensource/solaris-source-
       code-downloads.html.

       This software was built from source available at
       https://github.com/oracle/solaris-userland.  The original community
       source was downloaded from
       https://github.com/libarchive/libarchive/releases/down-
       load/v3.6.1/libarchive-3.6.1.tar.gz.

       Further information about this software can be found on the open source
       community website at http://www.libarchive.org/.



                               February 2, 2012         ARCHIVE_READ(3archive)