easy way to unzip file with golang

Most answers here are wrong, as they assume that the Zip archive will emit directory entries. Zip archives are not required to emit directory entries, and so given an archive such as that, a naive program will crash upon encountering the first non-root file, as no directories will ever be created, and the file creation will fail as the directory has not been created yet. Here is a different approach:

package main

import (
   "archive/zip"
   "os"
   "path"
)

func unzip(source, dest string) error {
   read, err := zip.OpenReader(source)
   if err != nil { return err }
   defer read.Close()
   for _, file := range read.File {
      if file.Mode().IsDir() { continue }
      open, err := file.Open()
      if err != nil { return err }
      name := path.Join(dest, file.Name)
      os.MkdirAll(path.Dir(name), os.ModeDir)
      create, err := os.Create(name)
      if err != nil { return err }
      defer create.Close()
      create.ReadFrom(open)
   }
   return nil
}

func main() {
   unzip("Microsoft.VisualCpp.Tools.HostX64.TargetX64.vsix", "tools")
}

I would prefer using 7zip with Go, which would give you something like this.

func extractZip() {
    fmt.Println("extracting", zip_path)
    commandString := fmt.Sprintf(`7za e %s %s`, zip_path, dest_path)
    commandSlice := strings.Fields(commandString)
    fmt.Println(commandString)
    c := exec.Command(commandSlice[0], commandSlice[1:]...)
    e := c.Run()
    checkError(e)
}

Better example code

However, if using 7zip isn't possible, then try this. Defer a recover to catch the panics. (Example)

func checkError(e error){
  if e != nil {
    panic(e)
  }
}
func cloneZipItem(f *zip.File, dest string){
    // Create full directory path
    path := filepath.Join(dest, f.Name)
    fmt.Println("Creating", path)
    err := os.MkdirAll(filepath.Dir(path), os.ModeDir|os.ModePerm)
    checkError(err)

    // Clone if item is a file
    rc, err := f.Open()
    checkError(err)
    if !f.FileInfo().IsDir() {
        // Use os.Create() since Zip don't store file permissions.
        fileCopy, err := os.Create(path)
        checkError(err)
        _, err = io.Copy(fileCopy, rc)
        fileCopy.Close()
        checkError(err)
    }
    rc.Close()
}
func Extract(zip_path, dest string) {
    r, err := zip.OpenReader(zip_path)
    checkError(err)
    defer r.Close()
    for _, f := range r.File {
        cloneZipItem(f, dest)
    }
}

Slight rework of the OP's solution to create the containing directory dest if it doesn't exist, and to wrap the file extraction/writing in a closure to eliminate stacking of defer .Close() calls per @Nick Craig-Wood's comment:

func Unzip(src, dest string) error {
    r, err := zip.OpenReader(src)
    if err != nil {
        return err
    }
    defer func() {
        if err := r.Close(); err != nil {
            panic(err)
        }
    }()

    os.MkdirAll(dest, 0755)

    // Closure to address file descriptors issue with all the deferred .Close() methods
    extractAndWriteFile := func(f *zip.File) error {
        rc, err := f.Open()
        if err != nil {
            return err
        }
        defer func() {
            if err := rc.Close(); err != nil {
                panic(err)
            }
        }()

        path := filepath.Join(dest, f.Name)

        // Check for ZipSlip (Directory traversal)
        if !strings.HasPrefix(path, filepath.Clean(dest) + string(os.PathSeparator)) {
            return fmt.Errorf("illegal file path: %s", path)
        }

        if f.FileInfo().IsDir() {
            os.MkdirAll(path, f.Mode())
        } else {
            os.MkdirAll(filepath.Dir(path), f.Mode())
            f, err := os.OpenFile(path, os.O_WRONLY|os.O_CREATE|os.O_TRUNC, f.Mode())
            if err != nil {
                return err
            }
            defer func() {
                if err := f.Close(); err != nil {
                    panic(err)
                }
            }()

            _, err = io.Copy(f, rc)
            if err != nil {
                return err
            }
        }
        return nil
    }

    for _, f := range r.File {
        err := extractAndWriteFile(f)
        if err != nil {
            return err
        }
    }

    return nil
}

Note: Updated to include Close() error handling as well (if we're looking for best practices, may as well follow ALL of them).

I'm using archive/zip package to read .zip files and copy to the local disk. Below is the source code to unzip .zip files for my own needs.

import (
    "archive/zip"
    "io"
    "log"
    "os"
    "path/filepath"
    "strings"
)

func unzip(src, dest string) error {
    r, err := zip.OpenReader(src)
    if err != nil {
        return err
    }
    defer r.Close()

    for _, f := range r.File {
        rc, err := f.Open()
        if err != nil {
            return err
        }
        defer rc.Close()

        fpath := filepath.Join(dest, f.Name)
        if f.FileInfo().IsDir() {
            os.MkdirAll(fpath, f.Mode())
        } else {
            var fdir string
            if lastIndex := strings.LastIndex(fpath,string(os.PathSeparator)); lastIndex > -1 {
                fdir = fpath[:lastIndex]
            }

            err = os.MkdirAll(fdir, f.Mode())
            if err != nil {
                log.Fatal(err)
                return err
            }
            f, err := os.OpenFile(
                fpath, os.O_WRONLY|os.O_CREATE|os.O_TRUNC, f.Mode())
            if err != nil {
                return err
            }
            defer f.Close()

            _, err = io.Copy(f, rc)
            if err != nil {
                return err
            }
        }
    }
    return nil
}