Python: Open file in zip without temporarily extracting it

Question

How can I open files in a zip archive without extracting them first?

I\'m using pygame. To save disk space, I have all the images zipped up. Is it possible to load a

Answer 1

In theory, yes, it's just a matter of plugging things in. Zipfile can give you a file-like object for a file in a zip archive, and image.load will accept a file-like object. So something like this should work:

import zipfile
archive = zipfile.ZipFile('images.zip', 'r')
imgfile = archive.open('img_01.png')
try:
    image = pygame.image.load(imgfile, 'img_01.png')
finally:
    imgfile.close()