zipfile — Work with ZIP archives

The zipfile module provides tools to create, read, write, append, and list ZIP files. It supports compression.

import zipfile

Creating a ZIP Archive

import zipfile

# Open archive in Write mode ('w')
# Use ZIP_DEFLATED to actually compress files (default stores uncompressed)
with zipfile.ZipFile('archive.zip', 'w', compression=zipfile.ZIP_DEFLATED) as zf:
    # write(filename_to_zip, name_inside_archive)
    zf.write('my_script.py', 'code/script.py')
    zf.write('data.csv', 'data/data.csv')

Extracting a ZIP Archive

import zipfile

with zipfile.ZipFile('archive.zip', 'r') as zf:
    # 1. Print all internal files
    print(zf.namelist())
    
    # 2. Extract thoroughly!
    # Using extractall securely in Python 3.12+ 
    # to prevent path-traversal attacks
    zf.extractall('extracted_folder/')

Inspecting an Archive without Extracting

You can read the contents of a single file directly into memory without unpacking the entire archive.

import zipfile

with zipfile.ZipFile('archive.zip', 'r') as zf:
    info = zf.getinfo('code/script.py')
    print(f"Original size: {info.file_size} bytes")
    print(f"Compressed size: {info.compress_size} bytes")
    
    # Read file content directly into memory
    with zf.open('code/script.py') as script_file:
        content = script_file.read()
        print(content.decode('utf-8'))

API Reference

ZipFile Class

Constants