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How to work with ZIP files in Python

Learn ZIP file manipulation with the zipfile module.


ZIP format is commonly used as a file archival as well as compression format which is supported across all platforms. Files can be compressed without losing any data. Python has built-in support for ZIP files.

In this article, we will learn how ZIP files can be read, written, extracted, and listed in Python.

List ZIP file contents

The zipfile module in Python, a part of the built-in libraries, can be used to manipulate ZIP files. It is advised to work with file handlers inside a context manager as it takes care of file pointer closure.

To read a ZIP file we first create an instance of the ZipFile class and use the following methods to get file information:

import zipfile

with zipfile.ZipFile("./data.zip") as zip:
    print("As table:")
    print(zip.printdir()) # display files and folders in tabular format
    print("\nAs list:")
    print(zip.namelist()) # list of files and folders
    print("\nAs list of objects:")
    print(zip.infolist()) # get files as ZipInfo objects

Output:

As table:
File Name                                    Modified                       Size
data/                                        2022-04-24 19:00:16            0
data/assets/                                 2022-04-24 19:00:24            0
data/assets/index.txt                        2022-04-24 19:01:12           11
data/configurations.txt                      2022-04-24 18:52:26            0
data/sample.txt                              2022-04-24 18:52:16            0

As list:
['data/', 'data/assets/', 'data/assets/index.txt', 'data/configurations.txt', 'data/sample.txt']

As list of objects:
[<ZipInfo filename='data/' external_attr=0x10>, <ZipInfo filename='data/assets/' external_attr=0x10>, <ZipInfo filename='data/assets/index.txt' compress_type=deflate external_attr=0x20 file_size=11 compress_size=13>, <ZipInfo filename='data/configurations.txt' external_attr=0x20 file_size=0>, <ZipInfo filename='data/sample.txt' external_attr=0x20 file_size=0>]

Read specific files from ZIP

After a ZIP file is read, use the open() method to read a specific file.

import zipfile

with zipfile.ZipFile("./data.zip") as zip:
    with zip.open("data/assets/index.txt") as fp:
        print(fp.read().decode())

Output:

hello-world

Adding files to a ZIP

To add files we first open the ZIP file in append mode. It is important not to open it in write mode because then the entire ZIP will be overwritten!

import zipfile

with zipfile.ZipFile("./data.zip", "a") as zip:
    zip.write("app.py", arcname="python/app.py")
Here, arcname is used to define the path of file inside the ZIP.

Extracting the contents

Extraction is pretty simple. For this the file needs to be opened in read mode:

import zipfile

with zipfile.ZipFile("./data.zip", "a") as zip:
    zip.extractall() # extract data into current working directory

Extracting password protected ZIP:

import zipfile

with zipfile.ZipFile("./data.zip", "a") as zip:
    zip.extractall(pwd=bytes(pswd, 'utf-8'))

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