How to create a zip file in Java

Look at this example:

StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
sb.append("Test String");

File f = new File("d:\\test.zip");
ZipOutputStream out = new ZipOutputStream(new FileOutputStream(f));
ZipEntry e = new ZipEntry("mytext.txt");
out.putNextEntry(e);

byte[] data = sb.toString().getBytes();
out.write(data, 0, data.length);
out.closeEntry();

out.close();

This will create a zip in the root of D: named test.zip which will contain one single file called mytext.txt. Of course you can add more zip entries and also specify a subdirectory like this:

ZipEntry e = new ZipEntry("folderName/mytext.txt");

You can find more information about compression with Java here.

Java 7 has ZipFileSystem built in, that can be used to create, write and read file from zip file.

Java Doc: ZipFileSystem Provider

Map<String, String> env = new HashMap<>();
// Create the zip file if it doesn't exist
env.put("create", "true");

URI uri = URI.create("jar:file:/codeSamples/zipfs/zipfstest.zip");

try (FileSystem zipfs = FileSystems.newFileSystem(uri, env)) {
    Path externalTxtFile = Paths.get("/codeSamples/zipfs/SomeTextFile.txt");
    Path pathInZipfile = zipfs.getPath("/SomeTextFile.txt");          
    // Copy a file into the zip file
    Files.copy(externalTxtFile, pathInZipfile, StandardCopyOption.REPLACE_EXISTING); 
}