tar-stream

What is tar-stream?

The tar-stream npm package is a streaming tar parser and generator, which allows users to read and write tar archives in a streaming fashion. This means that you can process tar files without having to load the entire file into memory, which is useful for handling large files or for streaming applications.

What are tar-stream's main functionalities?

Extracting a tar archive

This feature allows you to extract files from a tar archive. The 'entry' event is emitted for each file in the archive, providing the file header and a stream for the file content.

const extract = require('tar-stream').extract;
const fs = require('fs');

let extractor = extract();
extractor.on('entry', (header, stream, next) => {
  // header is the tar header
  // stream is the content body (might be an empty stream)
  // call next when you are done with this entry

  stream.on('end', () => next());
  stream.resume(); // just auto drain the stream
});

fs.createReadStream('archive.tar').pipe(extractor);

Creating a tar archive

This feature allows you to create a tar archive. You can add entries to the archive with the 'entry' method, and then finalize the archive when you are done.

const pack = require('tar-stream').pack;
const fs = require('fs');

let packer = pack();

// add a file called my-test.txt with the content 'Hello World!'
packer.entry({ name: 'my-test.txt' }, 'Hello World!', (err) => {
  if (err) throw err;
  packer.finalize(); // finalize the archive when you are done
});

// pipe the pack stream somewhere, like to a file
packer.pipe(fs.createWriteStream('my-tarball.tar'));

Other packages similar to tar-stream

archiver

Archiver is a high-level streaming archive library that supports creating TAR and ZIP archives. It provides more abstraction than tar-stream and includes additional features like appending files from streams, buffers, or directories, and setting global archive options.

tar-fs

tar-fs is a Node.js module that provides filesystem bindings for tar-stream. It allows you to pack directories into tarballs and extract tarballs into directories using a file system interface, making it a bit more convenient for certain use cases compared to the lower-level tar-stream.

tar

The 'tar' package is a full-featured Tar for Node.js, which includes utilities for creating, manipulating, and extracting tar archives. It's a higher-level package compared to tar-stream and includes features like gzip compression and decompression.