Codeigniter Zip directory and download

Question

I am having a very strange problem when zipping a directory and try to download using codeigniter.

Here is the code

    $this->load->library('zip'); //Loading the zip library
    $directory = $_SESSION['directory-download-path']; //Getting the directory from session
    $name = basename($directory); //get the name of the folder
    $name = str_replace(" ", "_", $name).".zip"; //create the zip name
    unset($_SESSION['directory-download-path']); //removing it from session
    $this->zip->read_dir($directory); //read the directory
    $this->zip->download($name); //download the zip

It is very simple. The problem occurs with the download. I get the zip file but when i extract it i get a file with .zip.cpgz and continues to extract similar files. Thus i think it is corrupted. Can you please help me why is this occurring. I have permissions and everything on the directory because i am doing other operations.

EDIT:

I found after some more research to add the second parameter as follows:

$this->zip->read_dir($directory, false); //read the directory

But still not working. Another solution was to add

ob_end_clean(); 

just before the line: $this->zip->download($name); //download the zip $this->zip->download($name); //download the zip

but still no success!

Answer 1

Since I had no response i made a function outside of codeigniter that zips files and folder recursively which is below:

public function Zip($source, $destination)
{
    if (!extension_loaded('zip') || !file_exists($source)) {
        return false;
    }

    $zip = new ZipArchive();
    if (!$zip->open($destination, ZIPARCHIVE::CREATE)) {
        return false;
    }

    $source = str_replace('\\', '/', realpath($source));

    if (is_dir($source) === true)
    {
        $files = new RecursiveIteratorIterator(new RecursiveDirectoryIterator($source), RecursiveIteratorIterator::SELF_FIRST);

        foreach ($files as $file)
        {
            $file = str_replace('\\', '/', $file);

            if( in_array(substr($file, strrpos($file, '/')+1), array('.', '..', "Thumbs.db")) )
                continue;

            $file = realpath($file);

            if (is_dir($file) === true)
            {
                $zip->addEmptyDir(str_replace($source . '/', '', $file . '/'));
            }
            else if (is_file($file) === true)
            {
                $zip->addFromString(str_replace($source . '/', '', $file), file_get_contents($file));
            }
        }
    }
    else if (is_file($source) === true)
    {
        $zip->addFromString(basename($source), file_get_contents($source));
    }

    return $zip->close();
}

After this in the codeigniter controller i made this:

$this->projects->Zip($source, $destination);
   header("Content-type: application/zip");
   header("Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=$name");
   header("Content-length: " . filesize($destination));
   header("Pragma: no-cache");
   header("Expires: 0");
   readfile($destination);
   unlink($destination);

Of course the $destination should be to a temp folder where you have permissions 777 or equivalent so that when the file is sent to the client it will be deleted.

Hope this helps!