Extract Files from ASiC-E: four methods compared

Method 1: a browser viewer

Drop the container onto ASiCE Viewer and use the download icons or Download all (ZIP). You also see who signed and whether the files match the signatures. No installation.

Method 2: DigiDoc4

Open the container, select a file and choose to save it to disk. You get the official validity status as well. Requires installation.

Method 3: rename to .zip

Make a copy of the container.
Change the copy's extension from .asice to .zip.
Open it with the system's archive tool and extract.

You will see the documents and a META-INF folder. It works because the container is a ZIP archive.

Method 4: command line

unzip contract.asice -d contract on Linux and macOS;
tar -xf contract.asice in Windows Terminal;
7z x contract.asice with 7-Zip.

Add a loop and you can unpack a whole folder of containers.

Comparison

	Viewer	DigiDoc4	Rename to ZIP	Command line
Installation	None	Yes	None	Usually present
Shows signers	Yes	Yes	No	No
Integrity check	Yes	Yes	No	No
Official validity	No	Yes	No	No
Decodes DDOC	Yes	Yes	No, DDOC is not a ZIP	No
Good for bulk	Several at once	One at a time	Tedious	Best

What ZIP methods miss

A ZIP tool treats the container as an anonymous archive. It will happily extract a document that was modified after signing, with no warning. If the reason you are extracting is to rely on the content, use a method that checks integrity, or verify a digest yourself as shown in ASiC-E file reader.

File names with accents

Older archive tools sometimes garble non-ASCII names. If Üürileping.pdf comes out as ??rileping.pdf, extract with a viewer instead; it decodes names as UTF-8 with a fallback to the Baltic code page.

Never extract and repack

Extract, read, use. Do not zip the folder back up and rename it to .asice: the result is not a valid container, because the mimetype entry must come first and uncompressed, and any change to a document breaks the signatures.

On the move

The ASiC-E Viewer app extracts documents on Android without a connection. The one-click route is described in ASiC-E extractor.

Frequently asked questions

Is it safe to rename an .asice file to .zip?

Yes, if you rename a copy. The content is not changed by renaming.

Can I extract files from many containers at once?

With a command-line loop, or by dropping several containers onto the viewer and saving each one's documents.

Extract files from ASiC-E: four methods compared