How can PHP be used to create a zip function for downloading multiple files at once?

When downloading multiple files at once, it is more efficient to create a zip archive containing all the files rather than downloading each file individually. This can be achieved using PHP's ZipArchive class to create a zip file on the server and then prompt the user to download it. By looping through the files to be included in the zip archive and adding them to the archive, we can provide a single download link for all the files. 

<?php
// Array of files to be zipped
$files = array('file1.txt', 'file2.jpg', 'file3.pdf');

// Create a zip file
$zip = new ZipArchive();
$zipname = 'download.zip';
$zip->open($zipname, ZipArchive::CREATE);

// Add files to the zip
foreach ($files as $file) {
    $zip->addFile($file);
}

$zip->close();

// Prompt user to download the zip file
header('Content-Type: application/zip');
header('Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="'.basename($zipname).'"');
header('Content-Length: ' . filesize($zipname));
readfile($zipname);

// Delete the zip file after download
unlink($zipname);
?>

Keywords

PHP zip function file download multiple files compression.

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