---

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📦 RARLab's rar.exe .NET Wrapper Library

A full-featured .NET wrapper for RARLab's official rar.exe command-line tool. This library empowers .NET developers to seamlessly access and control almost all the functionality provided by rar.exe — such as compressing, extracting, listing, testing, creating recovery volumes and managing RAR archives — from within their applications.

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👋 Introduction

RARLab provides a powerful command-line tool, rar.exe, with deep support for creating and extracting RAR archives. However, using it directly from .NET requires manually spawning processes, constructing CLI arguments, and parsing the textual output — a repetitive and error-prone task.

This project eliminates that friction by wrapping a range of rar.exe functionalities in an intuitive .NET interface.

The wrapper is implemented in VB.NET but is fully compatible with both VB.NET and C# projects. It targets .NET Framework 4.8.1 by default, but can be easily migrated to .NET 5+ without issues, as it relies on no external dependencies other than the user-supplied rar.exe executable.

👌 Features

✅ Archive Creation and Modification Create, fresh or update .rar files from one or multiple files/folders, with support for recursive inclusion, solid archives, volume splitting, and compression tuning.

✅ Extraction Support Extract archives to custom locations, with full support for password-protected archives, overwrite rules, and directory flattening.

✅ Archive Listing Retrieve file lists (size, timestamps, CRC, etc.) from existing archives programmatically.

✅ Password Support Handle encrypted archives with ease, both when creating and extracting, using secure password input.

✅ Advanced RAR Options Expose almost the full range of RAR’s features: recovery records, archive locking, comment injection, timestamps, file exclusions, and more.

✅ Multi-volume Archive Handling Create and extract archives split into multiple volumes — ideal for large datasets or removable media.

✅ Error Handling and Output Parsing Automatically parse output from rar.exe, detect errors, and raise structured exceptions where appropriate.

✅ Cross-language Usability Though written in VB.NET, the wrapper is compiled into a .NET assembly (a dll library), making it easy to use in C#, F#, and other .NET-supported languages.

✅ No External Dependencies Only dependency is rar.exe from RARLab — no third-party libraries required.

🧰 Requirements

• rar.exe from RARLab's WinRAR (command-line version only). Please note that rar.exe is not free, it requires a product license (the same from a licensed WinRAR product).

🤖 Getting Started

Clone this repository or download the latest compilation by clicking here.

Add the project to your solution or reference the compiled DLL file.

Ensure rar.exe is present in your system environment path or specify its full path in the wrapper configuration. A working product license would also be required for using almost all the rar.exe functionalities.

Start compressing or extracting archives with simple method calls!

📝 Usage Examples

Construct a Command for RAR archive creation using the RarCreationCommand class:

VB NET

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Imports DevCase.RAR
Imports DevCase.RAR.Commands

Dim archivePath As String = "C:\New Archive.rar"
Dim filesToAdd As String = "C:\Directory to add\"

Dim command As New RarCreationCommand(RarCreationMode.Add, archivePath, filesToAdd) With {
    .RarExecPath = ".\rar.exe",
    .RarLicenseData = "(Your license key)",
    .RecurseSubdirectories = True,
    .EncryptionProperties = Nothing,
    .SolidCompression = False,
    .CompressionMode = RarCompressionMode.Normal,
    .DictionarySize = RarDictionarySize.Mb__128,
    .OverwriteMode = RarOverwriteMode.Overwrite,
    .FilePathMode = RarFilePathMode.ExcludeBaseDirFromFileNames,
    .FileTimestamps = RarFileTimestamps.All,
    .AddQuickOpenInformation = TriState.True,
    .ProcessHardLinksAsLinks = True,
    .ProcessSymbolicLinksAsLinks = TriState.True,
    .DuplicateFileMode = RarDuplicateFileMode.Enabled,
    .FileChecksumMode = RarFileChecksumMode.BLAKE2sp,
    .ArchiveComment = New RarArchiveComment("Hello world!"),
    .RecoveryRecordPercentage = 0,
    .VolumeSplitOptions = Nothing,
    .FileTypesToStore = Nothing
}

C#

---

using DevCase.RAR;
using DevCase.RAR.Commands;

string archivePath = "C:\\New Archive.rar";
string filesToAdd = "C:\\Directory to add\\";

RarCreationCommand command = new RarCreationCommand(RarCreationMode.Add, archivePath, filesToAdd) {
    RarExecPath = ".\\rar.exe",
    RarLicenseData = "(Your license key)",
    RecurseSubdirectories = true,
    EncryptionProperties = null,
    SolidCompression = false,
    CompressionMode = RarCompressionMode.Normal,
    DictionarySize = RarDictionarySize.Mb__128,
    OverwriteMode = RarOverwriteMode.Overwrite,
    FilePathMode = RarFilePathMode.ExcludeBaseDirFromFileNames,
    FileTimestamps = RarFileTimestamps.All,
    AddQuickOpenInformation = Microsoft.VisualBasic.TriState.True,
    ProcessHardLinksAsLinks = true,
    ProcessSymbolicLinksAsLinks = Microsoft.VisualBasic.TriState.True,
    DuplicateFileMode = RarDuplicateFileMode.Enabled,
    FileChecksumMode = RarFileChecksumMode.BLAKE2sp,
    ArchiveComment = new RarArchiveComment("Hello world!"),
    RecoveryRecordPercentage = 0,
    VolumeSplitOptions = null,
    FileTypesToStore = null
};

To retrieve the full command-line arguments of our Command:

Console.WriteLine($"Command-line arguments: {command}")

MessageBox.Show(command.ToString())

Execute our Command using the RarCommandExecutor class:

VB NET

---

Using rarExecutor As New RarCommandExecutor(command)

    AddHandler rarExecutor.OutputDataReceived,
        Sub(sender As Object, e As DataReceivedEventArgs)
            Console.WriteLine($"[Output] {Date.Now:yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss} - {e.Data}")
        End Sub

    AddHandler rarExecutor.ErrorDataReceived,
        Sub(sender As Object, e As DataReceivedEventArgs)
            If e.Data IsNot Nothing Then
                Console.WriteLine($"[Error] {Date.Now:yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss} - {e.Data}")
            End If
        End Sub

    AddHandler rarExecutor.Exited,
        Sub(sender As Object, e As EventArgs)
            Dim pr As Process = DirectCast(sender, Process)
            Dim rarExitCode As RarExitCode = DirectCast(pr.ExitCode, RarExitCode)
            Console.WriteLine($"[Exited] {Date.Now:yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss} - rar.exe process has terminated with exit code {pr.ExitCode} ({rarExitCode})")
        End Sub

    Dim exitcode As RarExitCode = rarExecutor.ExecuteRarAsync().Result
End Using

C#

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using (RarCommandExecutor rarExecutor = new RarCommandExecutor(command)) {

  rarExecutor.OutputDataReceived += (object sender, DataReceivedEventArgs e) => {
      Console.WriteLine($"[Output] {DateTime.Now:yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss} - {e.Data}");
  };

  rarExecutor.ErrorDataReceived += (object sender, DataReceivedEventArgs e) => {
      if (e.Data != null) {
        Console.WriteLine($"[Error] {DateTime.Now:yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss} - {e.Data}");
      }
  };

  rarExecutor.Exited += (object sender, EventArgs e) => {
      Process pr = (Process)sender;
      RarExitCode rarExitCode = (RarExitCode)pr.ExitCode;
      Console.WriteLine($"[Exited] {DateTime.Now:yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss} - rar.exe process has terminated with exit code {pr.ExitCode} ({rarExitCode})");
  };

  RarExitCode exitcode = rarExecutor.ExecuteRarAsync().Result;
}

🔄 Change Log

Explore the complete list of changes, bug fixes, and improvements across different releases by clicking here.

⚠️ Disclaimer:

This Work (the repository and the content provided in) is provided "as is", without warranty of any kind, express or implied, including but not limited to the warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose and noninfringement. In no event shall the authors or copyright holders be liable for any claim, damages or other liability, whether in an action of contract, tort or otherwise, arising from, out of or in connection with the Work or the use or other dealings in the Work.

This Work has no affiliation, approval or endorsement by RARLab, the registered company and trademark owner of rar.exe.

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