Example use of node-tar. that create a tarball of the "public" directory and writes it to out.tar.

create-tar.js

// npm install tar fstream
var tar = require('tar');
var fstream = require('fstream');
var path = require('path');

var dst = fstream.Writer( { path: 'out.tar' } );
var src = fstream.Reader({ path: path.join(__dirname, './public'), type: "Directory" });

var pack = src.pipe(tar.Pack({ noProprietary: true }));
var out = pack.pipe(dst);