Zip file processing without recompiling PHP

I am trying to create an OsCommerce plugin that parses a number of
files and adds them to the catalog.
I need some method of transferring the files to be parsed to the
server with OsC.
Ideally, I would like to send these as a zip file, but in order to
keep the installation requirements and user knowledge requirements to
a minimum I would prefer not to have the client recompile PHP with zip
support.
Does anyone know of a module that will parse zip files without any
prerequisites?
I have searched google and usenet and not found anything useful.
Everything seems to point to the Zip module which requires ZZiplib and
recompilation of the PHP interpreter.
Also, is there any function that can be used to create a temp
directory with a unique name (equivalent of tempnam)? I would imagine
that there are security concerns involved in creating a tempnam file,
unlinking it and recreating a directory with the filename returned,
although this would be preferred to some other method of creating a
directory.

Many thanks in advance for your assistance.

Best Regards
Andy

re: Zip file processing without recompiling PHP

Andy wrote:
[...][color=blue]
> a minimum I would prefer not to have the client recompile PHP with zip
> support.[/color]

Why would any client (whatever you mean by "client") need PHP when running
Perl to begin with?
[color=blue]
> Does anyone know of a module that will parse zip files without any
> prerequisites?[/color]

Did you check CPAN.org? What does a search for ZIP return?
Or just do a plain "perldoc Archive::ZIP", it might even be installed
already.
[color=blue]
> I have searched google and usenet and not found anything useful.
> Everything seems to point to the Zip module which requires ZZiplib and
> recompilation of the PHP interpreter.[/color]

Again, what does Perl have to do with PHP?
[color=blue]
> Also, is there any function that can be used to create a temp
> directory with a unique name (equivalent of tempnam)?[/color]

Is there anything wrong with "mkdir()", details see "perldoc -f mkdir"?
And as far as temporary file names go: "perldoc -q temp" has some
interesting insights and suggestions.
[color=blue]
> I would imagine
> that there are security concerns involved in creating a tempnam file,
> unlinking it and recreating a directory with the filename returned,
> although this would be preferred to some other method of creating a
> directory.[/color]

No idea what you are talking about. Why would you want to create a file
first, delete it, and then create a temp directory with the same name?
Anything wrong with creating the directory right away? After all,
directories are nothing but files in a special format.

jue