Unzip
Expand .zip into files
Unzip takes a .zip archive that arrived as one bundled attachment and expands it back into the separate files inside, so the rest of your workflow can work on each file individually.
How it works
People often send a pile of documents as a single .zip file because it is tidier to email one attachment than fifteen. The catch is that a .zip is a sealed container: nothing downstream can read the documents inside until the container is opened. Unzip is that opener.
Drop this node in right after the file arrives, and it pops the archive open and lays out every file that was packed into it. From that point on your workflow sees the individual PDFs, images, or spreadsheets exactly as if each had been sent on its own.
This is almost always an early step. It clears the way for the nodes that actually do the work, because a reader or extractor cannot do anything with a zipped bundle, only with the real files hiding inside it.
Common use cases
Real situations where this node earns its place in a flow.
Accept a zip of documents
Let people upload one archive and expand it into individual files for the flow.
Unpack a batch export
Expand a zip produced by another system into its contents.
Open what arrived compressed
Decompress an emailed archive before the workflow processes it.
Unzip in a workflow
A simple example of where this node sits in a flow.
What you set up
- Place Unzip after the step that receives the .zip (an upload or an inbound email attachment).
- Connect its output to whatever should run on the files that come out, such as an extractor.
- Nothing to configure beyond the connection: it expands whatever archive it is handed.
Common questions
What if the files inside are also PDFs I need to read?
That is the normal case. Unzip just releases them, then you send those PDFs on to a reading or extraction step like any other file.
Can it handle a zip with many files in it?
Yes. It releases every file the archive contains, and you can pair it with Batch downstream to handle each one on its own.
Settings you configure on this node, stored under data.config in the workflow JSON. Leave a field unset to use its default.
preservePathsKeep archive folder paths in extracted filenames; forced on when a batch node is downstream.
Type: booleanDefault:falsefilePatternGlob pattern selecting which archive entries to extract.
Type: stringDefault:*.pdf
How this node appears inside a workflow's nodes[] array (the shape you see in the Developer export / import). A full workflow is { nodes: [...], edges: [...] }.
{
"id": "unzip",
"type": "card",
"position": {
"x": 160,
"y": 120
},
"data": {
"type": "unzip",
"kind": "processor",
"title": "Unzip",
"subtitle": "Expand .zip into files",
"config": {
"preservePaths": "false",
"filePattern": "*.pdf"
}
}
}