What is the Phar manifest file entry in PHP?

[Emily123]

Hi everyone,
I am currently studying about the compressions that is done in PHP programming language. I get very confused when the term Phar comes in compressing. I somewhat have understood the concept of the Phar but don't know anything about the Phar manifest file entry. So thought that there would be someone interested in helping me. So please tell me what is the Phar manifest file entry in PHP?

[Solitario]

The phar file format is composed of container / manifest / content / signature, and stores the critical information that is contained in the phar archive in its manifest. The Phar manifest is a highly optimized format that allows the specification file by file compression, permissions and even user metadata such as user or group owner. All values of more than one byte are stored as little-endian, with the exception of the API version that is stored for historical reasons in 3 pieces double enders. All unused flags are reserved for future use and should not be used to store custom information. Use the metadata file to store custom metadata on individual files.

[Deabelos]

There are some important things that you should know. All access in writing require phar.readonly is disabled in php.ini or directly via the command line. Only the tar or zip archive without. Phar in their name without container executable .phar / stub.php can be created if phar.readonly = 1. The archives based on the tar file format conform to modern USTAR format. The design of the header file tar makes more efficient than the zip file format and as effective as phar file format when it comes to accessing data. Filenames are limited to 255 bytes, there including the full path within the archive tar-based phar.

[Modifier]

Each manifest file contains the following information :

• Length of filename in bytes.
• Filename (length based on the previous value)
• Uncompressed file size in bytes
• Timestamp of file
• Compressed file size in bytes
• CRC32 checksum of the decompressed content of the file
• Bitmapped flags specific file

[opaper]

Recognized values for bitmapped flags specific to the file are listed below :

• 0x000001ff - These bits are reserved for defining specific permissions to the file. These are used for fstat () and can be used to recreate desired permissions in extraction cases.
• 0x00001000 - The file is compressed with zlib, if present.
• 0x00002000 - If present, the file is compressed with bzip.

[Praetor]

The Phar containing a signature always have the signature added at the end of Phar after the shipper, and the manifest content. The two types of signatures supported to date are MD5 and SHA1. I have tried to describe the signature format :

1. 4 bytes are used for flags signature. 0x0001 is used to define a signature MD5, SHA1 for 0x0002, 0x0004 for a 0x0008 and SHA256 for SHA512.
2. 4 bytes are used for GBMB magic used to define the presence of a signature.
3. 16 or 20 bytes are used for the current signature, 20 bytes for SHA1, 16 bytes for MD5, 32 bytes for SHA256, and 64 bytes for SHA512.