Indeed, ZIP gets us part of the way there, and also handles the issue of transferring more than one file in one download request. The downside to ZIP is that t

Indeed, ZIP gets us part of the way there, and also handles the issue of transferring more than one file in one download request. The downside to ZIP is that the information is cast away once you decompress it. If your file system doesn't maintain that metadata (eg Windows and file permissions), then it's just gone. You also can't really just keep your files in ZIP because operating systems don't really natively integrate transparent ZIP support into files, and you probably don't want the file compressed in most cases (your app may want to read it often, and not want to pay the cost of decompressing the whole thing.) But that is very close to what I am seeking, yes.