[edit] mod_zip

mod_zip (formerly ngx_zip) is an HTTP module for nginx that assembles ZIP archives dynamically. In simple configurations, mod_zip will take a list of files on the local file system and serve them as a single ZIP archive. In more complex setups, mod_zip can stream component files from upstream servers with nginx's native proxying code. Unlike many ZIP creation scripts, the process never takes up more than a few KB of RAM at time, even while assembling archives that are (potentially) hundreds of megabytes.

[edit] Installation

To install, download the source tarball, expand it, and then compile nginx with the following option:

--add-module=/path/to/mod_zip-1.x

nginx 0.7.25 or greater is required.

[edit] Usage

The module has no configuration directives. It is activated when the original response (presumably from an upstream) includes the following HTTP header:

X-Archive-Files: zip

It then scans the response body for a list of files. The syntax is a space-separated list of the file checksum (CRC-32), size (in bytes), location (properly URL-encoded), and file name. One file per line. The file location corresponds to a location in your nginx.conf; the file can be on disk, from an upstream, or from another module. The file name can include a directory path, and is what will be extracted from the ZIP file. Example:

1034ab38 428    /foo.txt   My Document1.txt
83e8110b 100339 /bar.txt   My Other Document1.txt

Files are retrieved and encoded in order. If a file cannot be found or the file request returns any sort of error, the download is aborted.

If all files in the list have a CRC-32 value, mod_zip will support the "Range" header for the download. Unknown CRC-32's should be indicated with a dash ("-"), e.g.

- 428    /foo.txt   My Document1.txt
- 100339 /bar.txt   My Other Document1.txt

[edit] Remote Upstreams

You can use the following setup to compose archives from multiple remote servers:

1034ab38 428    /server1/foo.txt   My Document1.txt
83e8110b 100339 /server2/bar.txt   My Other Document1.txt

location ~ "^/(?<srv>server[12])/(?UNIQ25789bf7448563f7-file-00000000-QINU