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

So many answers here, and I hope I might contribute with my own version, which is based on the original answer (by the way), but with a more graphical perspective, also using context for each zipfile setup and sorting os.walk(), in order to have a ordered output.

Having these folders and them files (among other folders), I wanted to create a .zip for each cap_ folder:

$ tree -d
.
├── cap_01
|    ├── 0101000001.json
|    ├── 0101000002.json
|    ├── 0101000003.json
|
├── cap_02
|    ├── 0201000001.json
|    ├── 0201000002.json
|    ├── 0201001003.json
|
├── cap_03
|    ├── 0301000001.json
|    ├── 0301000002.json
|    ├── 0301000003.json
| 
├── docs
|    ├── map.txt
|    ├── main_data.xml
|
├── core_files
     ├── core_master
     ├── core_slave

Here's what I applied, with comments for better understanding of the process.

$ cat zip_cap_dirs.py 
""" Zip 'cap_*' directories. """           
import os                                                                       
import zipfile as zf                                                            


for root, dirs, files in sorted(os.walk('.')):                                                                                               
    if 'cap_' in root:                                                          
        print(f"Compressing: {root}")                                           
        # Defining .zip name, according to Capítulo.                            
        cap_dir_zip = '{}.zip'.format(root)                                     
        # Opening zipfile context for current root dir.                         
        with zf.ZipFile(cap_dir_zip, 'w', zf.ZIP_DEFLATED) as new_zip:          
            # Iterating over os.walk list of files for the current root dir.    
            for f in files:                                                     
                # Defining relative path to files from current root dir.        
                f_path = os.path.join(root, f)                                  
                # Writing the file on the .zip file of the context              
                new_zip.write(f_path) 

Basically, for each iteration over os.walk(path), I'm opening a context for zipfile setup and afterwards, iterating iterating over files, which is a list of files from root directory, forming the relative path for each file based on the current root directory, appending to the zipfile context which is running.

And the output is presented like this:

$ python3 zip_cap_dirs.py
Compressing: ./cap_01
Compressing: ./cap_02
Compressing: ./cap_03

To see the contents of each .zip directory, you can use less command:

$ less cap_01.zip

Archive:  cap_01.zip
 Length   Method    Size  Cmpr    Date    Time   CRC-32   Name
--------  ------  ------- ---- ---------- ----- --------  ----
  22017  Defl:N     2471  89% 2019-09-05 08:05 7a3b5ec6  cap_01/0101000001.json
  21998  Defl:N     2471  89% 2019-09-05 08:05 155bece7  cap_01/0101000002.json
  23236  Defl:N     2573  89% 2019-09-05 08:05 55fced20  cap_01/0101000003.json
--------          ------- ---                           -------
  67251             7515  89%                            3 files