DigiOz Multimedia April 24, 2006

Environment:  VB,.NET 2003

The purpose of this short article is to show how to use the Code Guru Zip/Unzip DLL, which was originally written for Visual Basic 5 and 6, in a Visual Basic .NET Environment. If you are interested in reading the original article by Chris Eastwood, you can view it here:


http://www.codeguru.com/vb/gen/vb_graphics/fileformats/article.php/c6743/


Step 1: First, you will need to download the DLL files which were posted on Chris' Article. You can get a copy of them at the end of this page. The zip file contains 3 DLL's:

CGZipLibrary.dll
zip32.dll
Unzip32.dll

Simply download and extract the above 3 files into a directory on your machine (make sure to remember where you are putting them).

Step 2: Create a new Visual Basic .NET Project by Launching Visual Basic.NET, and selecting "Visul Basic Projects". Click on the "Windows Application" icon, and enter "ZipTutorial" as the Name of the project. Accept the default "Location" for the project that will be provided for you, and hit "OK". Here is what it will look like: Step 3: Copy and past the two DLL's called "zip32.dll" and "Unzip32.dll" into the "bin" folder of your new Project. Do NOT copy over the "CGZipLibrary.dll" DLL over yet. Step 4: A blank project will be opened for you, with a default form called "Form1". On the right side of the Visual Studio Screen, you will have the "Solution Explorer". Expand and Right Click on "References" folder, and Choose "Add Reference". A new window will pop up.

Step 5: Click on the "Project" Tab, and hit the "Browse" button. The "Select Component" window will appear. Using the menu provided, navigate to the location where you extracted the contents of the first zip file, and find the "CGZipLibrary.dll" DLL file. Here is what you will see: Step 6: Select the "CGZipLibrary.dll" file ONLY, hit OK to accept the selection, and OK again to exit the "Add Reference" Screen. Here is a screenshot of what you should now see in your Solution Explorer, and inside the bin directory of your project:

Step 7: Double Click on the empty Visual Basic Form, to get the Form_Load Event in the code Section of the Form. First, you will need to give your zip file a name. Here is how you do that:   Dim zp As New CGZipLibrary.CGZipFiles zp.ZipFileName = "ZipTutorial.zip"   The first line creates an instance of the Library, and the second line will be the file name for our zip file. By default, the application will place the zip file inside the bin directory of the project (since I did not specify a path for the zip file to be placed at). You can of course place a directory browse dialog to allow your users to select a directory on their system to place the zip file at. Step 8: Now we want to add some files to our zip file. For the purpose of this article, I have placed 3 images inside the bin directory of the Visual Basic Project, in order to simplify the code. Again, you can setup your own system to have users select files from their machines and add them to the zip file we are creating. Here is how to add new files to the zip archive:   zp.AddFile("cool.gif") zp.AddFile("cry.gif") zp.AddFile("evil.gif")   Step 9: Finally, to actually initialize the creation of the zip file (once you are done adding all your files to the new zip archive), you can do:   zp.MakeZipFile() MessageBox.Show("Zip File Created at" & vbCrLf & Application.StartupPath)   Now run your project and you will see a Message once the zip file is created for you. If you open the "bin" folder of your project now, here is what you will see inside it: The file "ZipTutorial.zip" will contain 3 image files in it, if you open it and look inside it. That's it! Feel free to post any questions you may have about this article either here at CodeGuru, or on my website's Support Forum at www.digioz.com. Pete Soheil DigiOz Multimedia 4/03/2006

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