How to zip a folder recursively using Python?

Zipping a folder recursively means compressing a folder along with all its subfolders and files. In this article, we will explore all the possible ways to zip a folder recursively using Python.

Using zipfile and os.walk()

In Python, we have the methods zipfile() and os.walk() to zip all the folders recursively. This is a manual approach of zipping the available subfolders and files into one. Following is an example that shows how to zip a folder recursively using Python -

import zipfile
import os

def zip_folder_manual(folder_path, zip_path):
   with zipfile.ZipFile(zip_path, 'w', zipfile.ZIP_DEFLATED) as zipf:
      for root, dirs, files in os.walk(folder_path):
         for file in files:
            full_path = os.path.join(root, file)
               arcname = os.path.relpath(full_path, folder_path)
               zipf.write(full_path, arcname)

# Usage
zip_folder_manual('my_folder', 'my_folder.zip')

Using shutil.make_archive()

Python's shutil module provides a simple and high-level method to create compressed archive files using make_archive(). This method is useful when we want to zip an entire directory with minimal code.

Below is an example that uses the shutil.make_archive() method to zip a folder using Python -

import shutil

# Folder to archive
source_dir = 'my_project'

# Create my_project.zip in the current directory
shutil.make_archive('my_project', 'zip', source_dir)

print("Folder zipped successfully.")

Below is the output of the above program -

Folder zipped successfully.