How to create a zip archive of a directory in python?

Question

How can I create a zip archive of a directory structure in Python?

Answer 1

Using the base Python zipfile module.

Answer 2

You probably want to look at the zipfile module; there's documentation at http://docs.python.org/library/zipfile.html.

You may also want os.walk() to index the directory structure.

Answer 3

As others have pointed out, you should use zipfile. The documentation tells you what functions are available, but doesn't really explain how you can use them to zip an entire directory. I think it's easiest to explain with some example code:

#!/usr/bin/env python
import os
import zipfile

def zipdir(path, zip):
    for root, dirs, files in os.walk(path):
        for file in files:
            zip.write(os.path.join(root, file))

if __name__ == '__main__':
    zip = zipfile.ZipFile('Python.zip', 'w')
    zipdir('tmp/', zip)
    zip.close()

Adapted from: http://www.devshed.com/c/a/Python/Python-UnZipped/

Answer 4

To add the contents of mydirectory to a new zip file, including all files and subdirectories:

import os
import zipfile

zf = zipfile.ZipFile("myzipfile.zip", "w")
for dirname, subdirs, files in os.walk("mydirectory"):
    zf.write(dirname)
    for filename in files:
        zf.write(os.path.join(dirname, filename))
zf.close()