Build Tar file from directory in PHP without exec/passthru

Question

So I have a client who's current host does not allow me to use tar via exec()/passthru()/ect and I need to backup the site periodicly and programmaticly so is there a solution?

This is a linux server.

Answer 1

At http://pear.php.net/package/Archive_Tar you can donload the PEAR tar package and use it like this to create the archive:

<?php
require 'Archive/Tar.php';
$obj = new Archive_Tar('archive.tar');
$path = '/path/to/folder/';
$handle=opendir($path); 
$files = array();
while(false!==($file = readdir($handle)))
 {
    $files[] = $path . $file;
 }

if ($obj->create($files))
 {
    //Sucess
 }
else
 {
    //Fail
 }
?>

Answer 2

PHP 5.3 offers a much easier way to solve this issue.

Look here: http://www.php.net/manual/en/phardata.buildfromdirectory.php

<?php
$phar = new PharData('project.tar');
// add all files in the project
$phar->buildFromDirectory(dirname(__FILE__) . '/project');
?>

Answer 3

There is the Archive_Tar library. If that can't be used for some reason, the zip extension might be another option.

Answer 4

I need a solution that would work on Azure websites (IIS) and had trouble with creating new files on the server using methods from other answers. The solution that worked for me was to use small TbsZip library for compression, which doesn't require to write file anywhere in the server - it's just returned directly via HTTP.

This thread is old, but this approach might be a bit more generic and complete answer, so I post the code as alternative:

// Compress all files in current directory and return via HTTP as a ZIP file
// by buli, 2013 (http://buli.waw.pl)
// requires TbsZip library from http://www.tinybutstrong.com

include_once('tbszip.php'); // load the TbsZip library
$zip = new clsTbsZip(); // instantiate the class
$zip->CreateNew(); // create a virtual new zip archive

// iterate through files, skipping directories
$objects = new RecursiveIteratorIterator(new RecursiveDirectoryIterator('.'));
foreach($objects as $name => $object)
{ 
    $n = str_replace("/", "\\", substr($name, 2)); // path format
    $zip->FileAdd($n, $n, TBSZIP_FILE); // add fileto zip archive
}

$archiveName = "backup_".date('m-d-Y H:i:s').".zip"; // name of the returned file 
$zip->Flush(TBSZIP_DOWNLOAD, $archiveName); // flush the result as an HTTP download

And here's the whole article on my blog.