Proposal for "File_CAB"

» Metadata » Status
» Description
A package to read and extract from (and in the future create) Microsoft Cabinet files. Uses either the 'cabextract' or 'expand' commands depending on the OS.

Originally I attempted to create a pure php package using the available documentation on the cabinet file format and the gzinflate() function, but deflated blocks contain references to strings in previous blocks which cannot be handled by using gzinflate().

I had also attempted to contact the maintainers of File_Archive to see if they had plans to include a cab extraction driver, but received no response.
» Dependencies » Links
  • PHP 5
  • Either 'cabextract' or 'expand.exe'
» Timeline » Changelog
  • First Draft: 2008-01-25
  • Proposal: 2008-01-29
  • Call for Votes: 2008-02-05

  • David Sanders
    [2008-02-04 10:56 UTC]

    Updated package following comments. Please comment further if the changes do
    not address what you had originally commented on.


    > I'd rather see a unique public property for the path to the executable, and
    > have default private values for Windows and Unix, this way the user only has
    > to deal with one setting. Since the class is already checking if it runs on
    > Windows of Unix there's no need to ask the user to set 2 different path
    > properties.

    Done. I've used constants for the commands and a public static property for
    the command.


    > Some shell escaping of file names and arguments are missing.

    Done, although I cannot escape "%SystemRoot%...". I thought perhaps using
    something like realpath() would expand this, but nope. Any suggestions?


    > Some of the docblock tags are not in the right order

    Done.


    > You can use the constant OS_WINDOWS to check whether you are on Windows.

    I'd rather not build up dependencies and it seems pretty trivial so I've copied
    this snippet and define the constant OS_WINDOWS if it isn't already defined.


    > Instead of hardcoding C:\windows\system32, you should use one of the
    > environment variables, probably %SYSTEMROOT%.

    Done. Note there is no variable for the complete System32 dir.


    > If you don't need to require PHP 5.2.1 just because of sys_get_temp_dir(),
    > you can use System::tmpdir() instead.
    > You may consider using System::which() in case the cabextract binary is
    > located elsewhere than /usr/bin.

    Again, I'd rather not create extra dependencies. Also, I'm not sure I see the
    point of using which() as this is the same as just using exec("cabextract").
    Isn't this a security risk?


    > I suggest reporting the file size as an integer, and last_modified as a Unix
    > timestamp (or a DateTime object).

    Done. I prefer that APIs with dates are standardised by using DateTime.


    > I suggest implementing the same API as File_Archive.

    Would be nice, but I'm not sure whether File_Archive can also handle multiple
    file archives such as cabinets?