How to untar file in node.js

Question

There are some untar libraries, but I cannot get them working.

My idea would be something like

untar(bufferStreamOrFilePath).extractToDirectory("/path", function(err){})

Is something like this available?

Answer 1

Just an update on this answer, instead of node-tar, consider using tar-fs which yields a significant performance boost, as well as a neater interface.

var tarFile = 'my-other-tarball.tar';
var target = './my-other-directory';

// extracting a directory
fs.createReadStream(tarFile).pipe(tar.extract(target));

Answer 2

The tar-stream module is a pretty good one:

var tar = require('tar-stream')    

var extract = tar.extract();
extract.on('entry', function(header, stream, callback) {
    // make directories or files depending on the header here...
    // call callback() when you're done with this entry
});

fs.createReadStream("something.tar").pipe(extract)

extract.on('finish', function() {
    console.log('done!')
});

Answer 3

A function to extract a base64 encoded tar fully in memory, with the assumption that all the files in the tar are utf-8 encoded text files.

const tar=require('tar');
let Duplex = require('stream').Duplex;

function bufferToStream(buffer) {
    let stream = new Duplex();
    stream.push(buffer);
    stream.push(null);
    return stream;
}


module.exports=function(base64EncodedTar){
    return new Promise(function(resolve, reject){
        const buffer = new Buffer.from(base64EncodedTar, "base64");

        let files={};

        try{

            bufferToStream(buffer).pipe(new tar.Parse())
                .on('entry', entry => {
                    let file={
                        path:entry.path,
                        content:""
                    };
                    files[entry.path]=file;
                    entry.on('data', function (tarFileData) {
                        file.content += tarFileData.toString('utf-8');
                    });

                    // resolve(entry);
                }).on('close', function(){
                  resolve(files);
                });
        } catch(e){
            reject(e);
        }

    })

};