Native api for compressed zip files?

[geran6]

Windows supports viewing and extracting zip files right inside explorer so is there an Windows api I can use to create and extract zip files?

[modoran]

There is no documented way to extract zip files natively on windows, use a 3rd party library.

This is a very small and powerful library I use everytime:
http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/7530/Zip-Utils-clean-elegant-simple-C-Win32


If you still insist to use the shell, read here:
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/118547/creating-a-zip-file-on-windows-xp-2003-in-c-c