do I have to use a temporary file??

If your zip data is small enough to fit in memory, then you do not have to use a temporary file. Archive::Zip supports reading from a file handle, but the file handle must be seekable.

Since perl 5.8.0, one can open a string. Unfortunately, the resulting file handle is not compatible with Archive::Zip.

#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;
use Archive::Zip;

my $zipfile = "test.zip";
open(ZIP, "<", "$zipfile") or die "$zipfile: $!";
my $zipdata = do { local $/; <ZIP>; };
close(ZIP);

open(my $ZIP, "<", \$zipfile) or die "\$zipfile: $!";

my $zip = Archive::Zip->new();
my $status = $zip->readFromFileHandle($ZIP);
print "\$status = $status\n";

foreach my $member ($zip->members()) {
    print "member: " . $member->fileName() . "\n";
}

close(ZIP);
[download]

error: file not seekable 
 at /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.8/Archive/Zip/Archive.pm line 437
        Archive::Zip::Archive::readFromFileHandle('Archive::Zip::Archi
+ve=HASH(0x88d4c54)', 'GLOB(0x83d9c28)') called at ./test.pl line 16
$status = 2
[download]

But IO::String gives compatible file handles, so you can use something like the following.

#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;
use Archive::Zip;
use IO::String;

my $zipfile = "test.zip";
open(ZIP, "<", "$zipfile") or die "$zipfile: $!";
my $zipdata = do { local $/; <ZIP>; };
close(ZIP);

my $io = IO::String->new($zipdata);

my $zip = Archive::Zip->new();
my $status = $zip->readFromFileHandle($io);
print "\$status = $status\n";

foreach my $member ($zip->members()) {
    print "member: " . $member->fileName() . "\n";
}

close(ZIP);
[download]