Was recently asked if zipping up a directory was something PowerShell could do. Before version 5.0, you could do it using the ZipFile class ([System.IO.Compression.ZipFile]::CreateFromDirectory(). Thankfully, with PowerShell version 5+ we have the Compress-Archive cmdlet.
Below is an example that creates a few files in a directory and compresses.
<# Compress-Archive example
Demonstrating how to use the Compress-Archive cmdlet.
We alse demonstrate a few other techinques:
* getting content from a web site (Invoke-WebRequest)
* use of the Foreach-Object
* using the Measure-Object cmdlet to see the size of a directory
#>
# Create a folder and retrieve some data, happens once before the for-loop
$begin = {
Set-Location -Path C:\TEMP
# Create a new directory to hold our text files
New-Item -Path . -Name ArchiveTest -ItemType Directory -Force | Out-Null
# Go fetch the data!
$url = ‘https://www.ams.usda.gov/mnreports/md_da800.txt’
$value = (Invoke-WebRequest -Uri $url).content
}
# Create the files, this is the looping section
$process = {
$name = “test$PSItem.txt”
# Create a new file
New-Item -Path .\ArchiveTest -Name $name -ItemType File -Force | Out-Null
# add the content we snagged from above
Add-Content “.\ArchiveTest\$name“ -Value $value
}
# Compress and compare, happens at the end of the looping
$end = {
“Before compression: {0}” -f (Get-ChildItem .\ArchiveTest -Recurse | Measure-Object -property length -sum).sum
Compress-Archive -Path .\ArchiveTest -DestinationPath .\ArchiveTest.zip -Force
“After compression: {0}” -f (Get-ChildItem .\ArchiveTest.zip | Measure-Object -property length -sum).sum
}
# Magic happens
1..250 | ForEach-Object -Begin $begin -Process $process -End $end
