Python Script to Compress a Directory into a ZIP Archive

This short tutorial demonstrates how to create a zip archive of a specified folder using Python's built‑in zipfile module.

The zip_dir function first builds a list of all files in the target directory (handling both single files and nested directories), then iterates over the list, printing each relative path and adding it to a new zip file opened in write mode with compression.

import os, os.path
import zipfile

def zip_dir(dirname, zipfilename):
    filelist = []
    if os.path.isfile(dirname):
        filelist.append(dirname)
    else:
        for root, dirs, files in os.walk(dirname):
            for name in files:
                filelist.append(os.path.join(root, name))
    zf = zipfile.ZipFile(zipfilename, "w", zipfile.zlib.DEFLATED)
    for tar in filelist:
        arcname = tar[len(dirname):]
        print(arcname)
        zf.write(tar, arcname)
    zf.close()

zip_dir('/xxxxxx/docs', '20180504.zip')

Finally, the article ends with a brief invitation to follow a public account for more automation learning materials.