How to Compress Files to a Zip Archive using C/C++

When we want to share a high volume of files at once, creating a Zip archive is a necessity. Thankfully, using the ready-to-run C/C++ code examples below, we can build a zip archive API into our file processing/task management applications and take care this repetitive process programmatically.

The below code allows us to combine 10+ files (using multipart/form-data) into a single Zip archive. Before we structure our API call, let’s first install libcurl in our C/C++ project:

libcurl/7.75.0

After that, let’s copy the following examples into our file:

CURL *curl;
CURLcode res;
curl = curl_easy_init();
if(curl) {
     curl_easy_setopt(curl, CURLOPT_CUSTOMREQUEST, "POST");
     curl_easy_setopt(curl, CURLOPT_URL, "https://api.cloudmersive.com/convert/archive/zip/create");
     curl_easy_setopt(curl, CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION, 1L);
     curl_easy_setopt(curl, CURLOPT_DEFAULT_PROTOCOL, "https");
     struct curl_slist *headers = NULL;
     headers = curl_slist_append(headers, "Content-Type: multipart/form-data");
     headers = curl_slist_append(headers, "Apikey: YOUR-API-KEY-HERE");
     curl_easy_setopt(curl, CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER, headers);
     curl_mime *mime;
     curl_mimepart *part;
     mime = curl_mime_init(curl);
     part = curl_mime_addpart(mime);
     curl_mime_name(part, "inputFile1");
     curl_mime_filedata(part, "/path/to/file");
     part = curl_mime_addpart(mime);
     curl_mime_name(part, "inputFile2");
     curl_mime_filedata(part, "/path/to/file");
     part = curl_mime_addpart(mime);
     curl_mime_name(part, "inputFile3");
     curl_mime_filedata(part, "/path/to/file");
     part = curl_mime_addpart(mime);
     curl_mime_name(part, "inputFile4");
     curl_mime_filedata(part, "/path/to/file");
     part = curl_mime_addpart(mime);
     curl_mime_name(part, "inputFile5");
     curl_mime_filedata(part, "/path/to/file");
     part = curl_mime_addpart(mime);
     curl_mime_name(part, "inputFile6");
     curl_mime_filedata(part, "/path/to/file");
     part = curl_mime_addpart(mime);
     curl_mime_name(part, "inputFile7");
     curl_mime_filedata(part, "/path/to/file");
     part = curl_mime_addpart(mime);
     curl_mime_name(part, "inputFile8");
     curl_mime_filedata(part, "/path/to/file");
     part = curl_mime_addpart(mime);
     curl_mime_name(part, "inputFile9");
     curl_mime_filedata(part, "/path/to/file");
     part = curl_mime_addpart(mime);
     curl_mime_name(part, "inputFile10");
     curl_mime_filedata(part, "/path/to/file");
     curl_easy_setopt(curl, CURLOPT_MIMEPOST, mime);
     res = curl_easy_perform(curl);
     curl_mime_free(mime);
}
curl_easy_cleanup(curl);

We can now authenticate our request with a free-tier API key (we can get one by registering a free account on the Cloudmersive website) and perform this operation up to 800 times per month with no commitment.

Nice and easy!