12.4.1 ZipFile Objects

class ZipFile( file[, mode[, compression[, allowZip64]]])

Open a ZIP file, where file can be either a path to a file (a string) or a file-like object. The mode parameter should be 'r' to read an existing file, 'w' to truncate and write a new file, or 'a' to append to an existing file. For mode is 'a' and file refers to an existing ZIP file, then additional files are added to it. If file does not refer to a ZIP file, then a new ZIP archive is appended to the file. This is meant for adding a ZIP archive to another file, such as python.exe. Using

cat myzip.zip >> python.exe

also works, and at least WinZip can read such files. compression is the ZIP compression method to use when writing the archive, and should be ZIP_STORED or ZIP_DEFLATED; unrecognized values will cause RuntimeError to be raised. If ZIP_DEFLATED is specified but the zlib module is not available, RuntimeError is also raised. The default is ZIP_STORED. If allowZip64 is True zipfile will create ZIP files that use the ZIP64 extensions when the zipfile is larger than 2 GB. If it is false (the default) zipfile will raise an exception when the ZIP file would require ZIP64 extensions. ZIP64 extensions are disabled by default because the default zip and unzip commands on Unix (the InfoZIP utilities) don't support these extensions.

close( ): Close the archive file. You must call close() before exiting your program or essential records will not be written.

getinfo( name): Return a ZipInfo object with information about the archive member name.

infolist( ): Return a list containing a ZipInfo object for each member of the archive. The objects are in the same order as their entries in the actual ZIP file on disk if an existing archive was opened.

namelist( ): Return a list of archive members by name.

printdir( ): Print a table of contents for the archive to sys.stdout.

read( name): Return the bytes of the file in the archive. The archive must be open for read or append.

testzip( ): Read all the files in the archive and check their CRC's and file headers. Return the name of the first bad file, or else return None.

write( filename[, arcname[, compress_type]])

Write the file named filename to the archive, giving it the archive name arcname (by default, this will be the same as filename, but without a drive letter and with leading path separators removed). If given, compress_type overrides the value given for the compression parameter to the constructor for the new entry. The archive must be open with mode 'w' or 'a'.

Note: There is no official file name encoding for ZIP files. If you have unicode file names, please convert them to byte strings in your desired encoding before passing them to write(). WinZip interprets all file names as encoded in CP437, also known as DOS Latin.

Note: Archive names should be relative to the archive root, that is, they should not start with a path separator.

writestr( zinfo_or_arcname, bytes): Write the string bytes to the archive; zinfo_or_arcname is either the file name it will be given in the archive, or a ZipInfo instance. If it's an instance, at least the filename, date, and time must be given. If it's a name, the date and time is set to the current date and time. The archive must be opened with mode 'w' or 'a'.

The following data attribute is also available:

debug: The level of debug output to use. This may be set from 0 (the default, no output) to 3 (the most output). Debugging information is written to sys.stdout.

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