Crazy JavaScript hack: unzipping a file
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Join For FreeHandling binary data is slowly getting better
in JavaScript, but in most browsers, people still have to resort to
amazingly clever hacks when it comes to things like unzipping a file
stored on a server. Here are the steps that are involved (slide 38). I suspect that you will never need to do this, but it is still fun to see what is possible.
- Read the binary data of the ZIP file from the server via XMLHttpRequest. You need to specify a charset x-user-defined to ensure that each byte stays a single character.
- Translate the binary data to base 64 and turn it into a PNG data URI. PNG is zipped internally, so if you get the header right, the web browser will unzip the data as soon as the image is drawn somewhere.
- Draw the image into a Canvas object, with a height of 1 pixel. Read the uncompressed data from the Canvas, pixel by pixel.
Hack (falconry)
JavaScript
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