.NET Library to unzip ZIP and RAR files

Question

What are good libraries to use Unzip RAR and Zip files in .NET? Do they even exist? Do they cost money or are there also free ones?

Answer 1

ZipLib - Free GPL - don't think it does rar though:

http://sharpdevelop.net/OpenSource/SharpZipLib/Default.aspx

You can use UnRAR.dll with P/Invoke:

http://www.rarlab.com/rar_add.htm

http://www.rarlab.com/rar/UnRARDLL.exe

Here's a .NET UnRAR libary:

http://www.chilkatsoft.com/rar-dotnet.asp

Answer 2

Xceed (.com) do a good Zip component (along with many others).

You could also look at using the 7zip components or any of the others mentioned. SharpZipLib is fairly decent.

Answer 3

DotNetZip is simple and easy to use, but it does only ZIP files, not RAR files. It's free, 100% managed code, open source.

Answer 4

Our Rebex ZIP is an example of a commercial one. Supports ZIP format only, not RAR.

In comparison with well-known SharpZipLib the Rebex ZIP contains a lot of samples and tutorials both in C# and VB.NET and the essential operations are extremely simple to write - compressing and decompressing can be written in one line of code:

// add content of the local directory C:\Data\  
// to the directory \Data-2010 (within the ZIP archive) 
// (ZIP archive C:\archive.zip doesn't have to exist) 
ZipArchive.Add(@"C:\archive.zip", @"C:\Data\*", @"\Data-2010");

// extract whole content of the ZIP archive 
// to the existing local directory C:\Data 
ZipArchive.ExtractAll(@"C:\archive.zip", @"C:\Data");

But also supports more complex features - encryption, recursive operations, working with streams and many others