Supported Protocols and Wrappers
PHP Manual

rar://

rar://RAR

Description

The wrapper takes the url encoded path to the RAR archive (relative or absolute), an optional asterik (*), an optional number sign (#) and an optional url encoded entry name, as stored in the archive. Specifying an entry name requires the number sign; a leading forward slash in the entry name is optional.

This wrapper can open both files and directories. When opening directories, the asterisk sign forces the directory entries names to be returned unencoded. If it's not specified, they will be returned url encoded – the reason for this is to allow the wrapper to be correctly used with built-in functionality like the RecursiveDirectoryIterator in the presence of file names that seem like url encoded data.

If the pound sign and the entry name part are not included, the root of the archive will be displayed. This differs from regular directories in that the resulting stream will not contain information such as the modification time, as the root directory is not stored in an inidivual entry in the archive. The usage of the the wrapper with RecursiveDirectoryIterator requires the number sign to be included in the URL when accessing the root, so that the URLs of the children may be constructed correctly.

Note: This wrapper is not enabled by default
In order to use the rar:// wrapper, you must install the » rar extension available from » PECL.

rar:// Available since PECL rar 3.0.0

Options

Options

Wrapper Summary
Attribute Supported
Restricted by allow_url_fopen No
Restricted by allow_url_include No
Allows Reading Yes
Allows Writing No
Allows Appending No
Allows Simultaneous Reading and Writing No
Supports stat() Yes
Supports unlink() No
Supports rename() No
Supports mkdir() No
Supports rmdir() No

Context options
Name Usage Default
open_password The password used to encrypt the headers of the archive, if any. WinRAR will encrypt all the files with the same password as the headers password when the later is present, so for archives with encrypted headers, file_password will be ignored.  
file_password The password used to encrypt a file, if any. If the headers are also encrypted, this option will be ignored in favor of open_password. The reason there are two options is to cover the possibility of supporting archives with different headers and file passwords, should those archives arise. Note that if the archive does not have its headers encrypted, open_password will be ignored and this option must be used instead.  
volume_callback A callback to determine the path of missing volumes. See RarArchive::open() for more information.  

Examples

Example #1 Traversing a RAR archive

<?php

class MyRecDirIt extends RecursiveDirectoryIterator {
    function 
current() {
        return 
rawurldecode($this->getSubPathName()) .
            (
is_dir(parent::current())?" [DIR]":"");
    }
}

$f "rar://" rawurlencode(dirname(__FILE__)) .
    
DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR 'dirs_and_extra_headers.rar#';

$it = new RecursiveTreeIterator(new MyRecDirIt($f));

foreach (
$it as $s) {
    echo 
$s"\n";
}
?>

The above example will output something similar to:

|-allow_everyone_ni [DIR]
|-file1.txt
|-file2_אּ.txt
|-with_streams.txt
\-אּ [DIR]
  |-אּ\%2Fempty%2E [DIR]
  | \-אּ\%2Fempty%2E\file7.txt
  |-אּ\empty [DIR]
  |-אּ\file3.txt
  |-אּ\file4_אּ.txt
  \-אּ\אּ_2 [DIR]
    |-אּ\אּ_2\file5.txt
    \-אּ\אּ_2\file6_אּ.txt

Example #2 Opening an encrypted file (header encryption)

<?php
$stream 
fopen("rar://" .
    
rawurlencode(dirname(__FILE__)) . DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR .
    
'encrypted_headers.rar' '#encfile1.txt'"r"false,
    
stream_context_create(
        array(
            
'rar' =>
                array(
                    
'open_password' => 'samplepassword'
                
)
            )
        )
    );
var_dump(stream_get_contents($stream));
/* creation and last access date is opt-in in WinRAR, hence most
 * files don't have them */
var_dump(fstat($stream));
?>

The above example will output something similar to:

string(26) "Encrypted file 1 contents."
Array
(
    [0] => 0
    [1] => 0
    [2] => 33206
    [3] => 1
    [4] => 0
    [5] => 0
    [6] => 0
    [7] => 26
    [8] => 0
    [9] => 1259550052
    [10] => 0
    [11] => -1
    [12] => -1
    [dev] => 0
    [ino] => 0
    [mode] => 33206
    [nlink] => 1
    [uid] => 0
    [gid] => 0
    [rdev] => 0
    [size] => 26
    [atime] => 0
    [mtime] => 1259550052
    [ctime] => 0
    [blksize] => -1
    [blocks] => -1
)

Supported Protocols and Wrappers
PHP Manual