Sharing packages .... but you can't see inside

[DanPatterson]

I do it all the time. 

I was bored... I was following a thread and the zip thing was mentioned.  I wondered about sharing a layer as a *.lpkx but I thought, NAH! if it ended in zip we would be done, zip the shapefile and off you go via email or the cloudie sharsies thing that is so popular.

PKzip and 7-zip are 2 popular zip programs out in the domain, so I thought why not have a look.

Besides 7-zip's 7z.dll can be seen in C:\_install_folder_\bin, so maybe it is installed besides my already installed version.  Opening up an *.lpkx file confirmed my suspicions  7z!   BTW, there are webpages listing what to look for as magics in the first number of bytes of a file, but that is for another blog.

package_layer00.png

So I unpacked my layer file to see what was in the layer package.

The next 2 images show the process of making the layer package.

package_layer01.pngpackage_layer02.png

Then I gave it a shot of seeing what was inside using 7-zip

package_layer03.png

And to my surprise there was a whole bunch of stuff inside, and the sample shapefile I used was contained in a folder.  The other folders had other stuff in them which might have been useful to some

package_layer04.png

So not everything appears to be what it is.  For instance, did you know that Word's *.docx format is really a zip file at its first level??  Look for the PK at the start of a word file in a text editor.

Now on to explore other things that might just be compressed. 

Back!  works for packed projects even packaging my gdb and toolboxes
package_layer05.png