How to Create an Encrypted and Password-Protected Zip file using C/C++

There’s no need to point-and-click our way through creating a secure Zip archive when we can accomplish that entire process programmatically. Using the below code, we can easily incorporate a zip, encryption & password-protection API into our applications capable of compressing 10+ files at a time using form data.

Before we structure our request with the C/C++ code examples provided further down the page, let’s first install libcurl in our project:

libcurl/7.75.0

Then let’s copy the below code 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/encrypted");
     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, "password: <string>");
     headers = curl_slist_append(headers, "encryptionAlgorithm: <string>");
     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 authorize up to 800 API requests per month for free (with no commitment) by providing a free-tier API key in the authorization header.

That’s all there is to it — nice and simple.