I've been trying to use the zipfile
and shutil.make_archive
modules to recursively create a zip file of a directory. Both modules work great--except empty directories do not get added to the archive. Empty directories containing other empty directories are also silently skipped.
I can use 7Zip to create an archive of the same path and empty directories are preserved. Therefore I know this is possible within the file format itself. I just don't know how to do it within Python. Any ideas? Thanks!
There is a example using zipfile:
import os, zipfile
from os.path import join
def zipfolder(foldername, filename, includeEmptyDIr=True):
empty_dirs = []
zip = zipfile.ZipFile(filename, 'w', zipfile.ZIP_DEFLATED)
for root, dirs, files in os.walk(foldername):
empty_dirs.extend([dir for dir in dirs if os.listdir(join(root, dir)) == []])
for name in files:
zip.write(join(root ,name))
if includeEmptyDIr:
for dir in empty_dirs:
zif = zipfile.ZipInfo(join(root, dir) + "/")
zip.writestr(zif, "")
empty_dirs = []
zip.close()
if __name__ == "__main__":
zipfolder('test1/noname/', 'zip.zip')
You'll need to register a new archive format to do that, since the default ZIP archiver does not support that. Take a look at the meat of the existing ZIP archiver. Make your own archiver that creates directories using that currently-unused dirpath
variable. I looked for how to create an empty directory and found this:
zip.writestr(zipfile.ZipInfo('empty/'), '')
With that, you should be able to write the necessary code to make it archive empty directories.
This is lifted from Adding folders to a zip file using python but is the only function I have tried that works. The one listed as the answer does not work under Python 2.7.3 (doesn't copy empty directories and is inefficient). The following is tried and tested:
#!/usr/bin/python
import os
import zipfile
def zipdir(dirPath=None, zipFilePath=None, includeDirInZip=True):
if not zipFilePath:
zipFilePath = dirPath + ".zip"
if not os.path.isdir(dirPath):
raise OSError("dirPath argument must point to a directory. "
"'%s' does not." % dirPath)
parentDir, dirToZip = os.path.split(dirPath)
#Little nested function to prepare the proper archive path
def trimPath(path):
archivePath = path.replace(parentDir, "", 1)
if parentDir:
archivePath = archivePath.replace(os.path.sep, "", 1)
if not includeDirInZip:
archivePath = archivePath.replace(dirToZip + os.path.sep, "", 1)
return os.path.normcase(archivePath)
outFile = zipfile.ZipFile(zipFilePath, "w",
compression=zipfile.ZIP_DEFLATED)
for (archiveDirPath, dirNames, fileNames) in os.walk(dirPath):
for fileName in fileNames:
filePath = os.path.join(archiveDirPath, fileName)
outFile.write(filePath, trimPath(filePath))
#Make sure we get empty directories as well
if not fileNames and not dirNames:
zipInfo = zipfile.ZipInfo(trimPath(archiveDirPath) + "/")
#some web sites suggest doing
#zipInfo.external_attr = 16
#or
#zipInfo.external_attr = 48
#Here to allow for inserting an empty directory. Still TBD/TODO.
outFile.writestr(zipInfo, "")
outFile.close()