Tiny TAR

This library provides a simple way to create POSIX TAR files. Library has no additional dependencies and will work both on a server-side and in a browser.

More info about TAR format can be found here

Install

Use npm install tinytar to install library.

Usage

Add dist/tinytar.js or dist/tinytar.min.js to your html page and use global tinyTar variable to access library API.

To use this library in CommonJS style use require:

var tinytar = require('tinytar');

Creating archive

Use require('tinytar').tar function. It accepts an array with objects; each object describes a single file. Objects properties are directly mapped to TAR header fields (see here). Property data may contain data for a file (if omitted - empty file will be added). Library supports almost everything that can contain data: strings, any array-like objects (including built-in Array and all typed arrays of course), ArrayBuffer and Node.js Buffer objects. Be careful: characters from string and values from Array will be clamped and only low byte will be used; typed arrays and ArrayBuffer will be saved properly.

Function returns Uint8Array with TAR data which can be saved or used somehow else.

For examples, see examples folder.

Reading archive

Reading is as simple as writing: use require('tinytar').untar function and pass anything that can be used as buffer (same as data property for file object - see above). untar also accepts some options:

• extractData: true - if set to false only archive index will be extracted, without files data.
• checkHeader: true - check header for integrity.
• checkChecksum: true - validate checksums.
• checkFileSize: true - file should be aligned to record boundary (512 bytes) and should contain two empty records at the end.

Some or all check* options may be set to false - this will allow to read corrupted files.

For examples, see examples folder.

.tar.gz

This library works great with pako: together they can create and read .tar.gz archives:

var tar = require('tinytar').tar;
var gzip = require('pako').gzip;

var gzipped = gzip(tar([
  /* ... file objects */
]));

var untar = require('tinytar').untar;
var ungzip = require('pako').ungzip;

var files = untar(ungzip(
  /* ... data */
));