PHP Manual: Construct a tar or zip archive from an iterator

Description

public array PharData::buildFromIterator(Traversable $iterator, stringnull $baseDirectory = null)

Populate a tar or zip archive from an iterator. Two styles of iterators are supported, iterators that map the filename within the tar/zip to the name of a file on disk, and iterators like DirectoryIterator that return SplFileInfo objects. For iterators that return SplFileInfo objects, the second parameter is required.

Parameters

iterator: Any iterator that either associatively maps tar/zip file to location or returns SplFileInfo objects
baseDirectory: For iterators that return SplFileInfo objects, the portion of each file's full path to remove when adding to the tar/zip archive

Return Values

PharData::buildFromIterator returns an associative array mapping internal path of file to the full path of the file on the filesystem.

Errors/Exceptions

This method returns UnexpectedValueException when the iterator returns incorrect values, such as an integer key instead of a string, a BadMethodCallException when an SplFileInfo-based iterator is passed without a baseDirectory parameter, or a PharException if there were errors saving the phar archive.

Changelog

Version	Description
8.1.0	PharData::buildFromIterator no longer returns `false`.
8.0.0	`baseDirectory` is now nullable.

Examples

Example #1 A PharData::buildFromIterator with SplFileInfo

For most tar/zip archives, the archive will reflect an actual directory layout, and the second style is the most useful. For instance, to create a tar/zip archive containing the files in this sample directory layout:

/path/to/project/
                 config/
                        dist.xml
                        debug.xml
                 lib/
                     file1.php
                     file2.php
                 src/
                     processthing.php
                 www/
                     index.php
                 cli/
                     index.php

This code could be used to add these files to the "project.tar" tar archive:

<?php
$phar = new PharData('project.tar');
$phar->buildFromIterator(
    new RecursiveIteratorIterator(
     new RecursiveDirectoryIterator('/path/to/project')),
    '/path/to/project');
?>

The file project.tar can then be used immediately. PharData::buildFromIterator does not set values such as compression, metadata, and this can be done after creating the tar/zip archive.

As an interesting note, PharData::buildFromIterator can also be used to copy the contents of an existing phar, tar or zip archive, as the PharData object descends from DirectoryIterator:

<?php
$phar = new PharData('project.tar');
$phar->buildFromIterator(
    new RecursiveIteratorIterator(
     new Phar('/path/to/anotherphar.phar')),
    'phar:///path/to/anotherphar.phar/path/to/project');
$phar->setStub($phar->createDefaultStub('cli/index.php', 'www/index.php'));
?>

Example #2 A PharData::buildFromIterator with other iterators

The second form of the iterator can be used with any iterator that returns a key => value mapping, such as an ArrayIterator:

<?php
$phar = new PharData('project.tar');
$phar->buildFromIterator(
    new ArrayIterator(
     array(
        'internal/file.php' => dirname(__FILE__) . '/somefile.php',
        'another/file.jpg' => fopen('/path/to/bigfile.jpg', 'rb'),
     )));
?>

PharData::buildFromIterator