express-static-zip

Serve static files out of a ZIP without unpacking.

About

Keeping client-side dependency libraries in the repository is a good practice, but there are huge ones like dojo and some proprietary ones like Arcgis JS API containing thousands of small files, making it a mess. You either go with them, making the repo at least ten times slower, or use the (sometimes internally) hosted ones, messing with versions and switching paths.

This module provides a means to serving such libraries or arbitrary static file packages right out of a ZIP without unpacking. Zipped library goes well with the repos even when they are several tens of megabytes in size. Zipped library doesn't pollute your repo with its contents.

You can add a classic express.static for production environment, with an unzip deployment script.

Example

Provided you have a biglib.zip in your root server folder, and serving library on url root:

var express = require('express');
var staticZip = require('express-static-zip');

var app = express();

app.use(staticZip('./biglib.zip'));

app.listen(process.env.PORT || 3000);

Now you are free to GET /some/files/inside/zip.txt

Options

app.use(staticZip('./biglib.zip', {
  zipRoot: "a-folder/";           // Use a directory inside ZIP file as
                                  // the root (Default: "")

  skip: ["file-in-a-folder.txt"]  // Do not server specified files (paths
                                  // relative to zipRoot, default: [])
}));

Additional info

Zip compressed content is loaded into memory synchronously at startup. It doesn't take long, some 50-300ms for a 20Mb JS lib with ~15k files.

Files are decompressed and cached in-memory upon request.

Tests

Tests are in the test/ directory. Install dev dependencies and use mocha. Coverage is rather full.