Creating and extracting ZIP archives

One of the most basic things you can do is work with ZIP files. The .NET Framework does an excellent job at providing this functionality right out of the box. You might need to provide ZIP functionality in an application that needs to upload several files to a network share. Being able to ZIP several files and upload a single ZIP file makes more sense than having to upload several smaller files. 

Getting ready

Perform the following steps:

1. Create a console application and call it FilesExample:

2. Right-click on the References node and select Add Reference... from the context menu:

3. In the Reference Manager, search for the word compression. Add a reference to System.IO.Compression and System.IO.Compression.FileSystem to your project and click on the OK button.

Note

At the time of writing, there was a System.IO.Compression version 4.1.0.0 and System.IO.Compression version 4.0.0.0 available from the Reference Manager. The example I created just used version 4.1.0.0...