This module provides a bestzip command that calls the native zip command if available and otherwise falls back to a Node.js implementation.

The --recurse-directories (-r) option is automatically enabled.

The native zip command on GNU/Linux and macOS is significantly faster and creates moderately smaller .zip files than the Node.js version included here, but Windows has no built-in zip command. This module provides the best of both worlds, and allows for easier cross-platform scripting.

npm install -g bestzip
bestzip destination.zip source/ [other sources...]

npm install --save-dev bestzip

package.json:

{
    //...
    "scripts": {
        "build" "...",
        "zip": "bestzip bundle.zip build/*",
        "upload": "....",
        "deploy": "npm run build && npm run zip && npm run upload"
    }
}

var zip = require('bestzip');

zip({
  source: 'build/*',
  destination: './destination.zip'
}).then(function() {
  console.log('all done!');
}).catch(function(err) {
  console.error(err.stack);
  process.exit(1);
});

// v1.x API also works for backwards compatibility: zip(destination, sources, callback)

• source: Path or paths to files and folders to include in the zip file. String or Array of Strings.
• destination: Path to generated .zip file.
• cwd: Set the Current Working Directory that source and destination paths are relative to. Defaults to process.cwd()
• level: Set the level of compression. (Number 0-9, with 0 being no compression and 9 being the most compressed.)

The directory structure in the .zip is going to match your input files, but the exact details depend on how the command is called. For example:

bestzip build.zip build/*

This includes the build/ folder inside of the .zip

Alternatively:

cd build/ && bestzip ../build.zip *

This will not include the build/ folder, it's contents will be top-level.

Note: some tools, including the Archive Utility built into macOS, will automatically create a top-level folder to group everything together when extracting a .zip archive that contains multiple top-level files.

When using the programmatic API, the same effect may be achieved by passing in the cwd option.

Wildcards (*) ignore dotfiles.

• To include a dotfile, either include the directory it's in (folder/) or include it by name (folder/.dotfile)
• To omit dotfiles, either use a wildcard (folder/*) or explicitly list the desired files (folder/file1.txt folder/file2.txt)

• bestzip output.zip foo/bar/file.txt now includes the foo/bar/ folders, previously it would place file.txt at the top-level
  • This was done to more closely align with the native zip command