ZipArchive php Class - Is it built-in to PHP?

Question

Ok, just wondering on the versions of PHP that this class is built into. And if they are built into all platforms (OS's). I'm wanting an approach to search through a zip file and place files using file_put_contents in different filepaths within the webroot. In any case, I'm familiar with how to do this with the ZipArchive class, but I'm wondering if using this class would be a good solution and support MOST, if not ALL servers?? I mean, I'd rather not use a method that requires the Server to have it installed. I'm looking for a solution to this that will support at least MOST servers without having to install the class...

Thanks :)

Also, I'd like to support opening tar.gz and/or .tgz files if possible, but I don't think the ZipArchive class supports this, but perhaps a different built-in php class does??

Solution

Tar support is not built into PHP, but if you have a look at the PEAR library you should be able to find some classes that support creating/extracting tarballs (amongst others). Have a look at http://pear.php.net/package/Archive_Tar or http://pear.php.net/package/File_Archive. The last one should be a generic interface to multiple archiving formats (including ZIP and TAR).

Whether or not ZIP support is built-in may vary, though I guess most packagers will include it. Then again, you could always test it by checking if the ZipArchive class exists by calling class_exists('ZipArchive'); and show a nice error message or fall back to a more generic approach...