How to compress files to create a new ZIP archive in Python

Creating ZIP archives in Python has always been a struggle. That is, until today. I am about to slice through that particular Gordian knot with a well-placed API.

Before anything else, pip install the API client that we need:

pip install cloudmersive-convert-api-client

Now it’s time that we wrote up our function call. This example code will get you started:

from __future__ import print_function
import time
import cloudmersive_convert_api_client
from cloudmersive_convert_api_client.rest import ApiException
from pprint import pprint
# Configure API key authorization: Apikey
configuration = cloudmersive_convert_api_client.Configuration()
configuration.api_key['Apikey'] = 'YOUR_API_KEY'
# Uncomment below to setup prefix (e.g. Bearer) for API key, if needed
# configuration.api_key_prefix['Apikey'] = 'Bearer'
# create an instance of the API class
api_instance = cloudmersive_convert_api_client.ZipArchiveApi(cloudmersive_convert_api_client.ApiClient(configuration))
request = cloudmersive_convert_api_client.CreateZipArchiveRequest() # CreateZipArchiveRequest | Input request
try:
# Compress files and folders to create a new zip archive with advanced options
api_response = api_instance.zip_archive_zip_create_advanced(request)
pprint(api_response)
except ApiException as e:
print("Exception when calling ZipArchiveApi->zip_archive_zip_create_advanced: %s\n" % e)

Our function is going to need its request object, which we can fill out like this:

{
  "FilesInZip": [
    {
      "FileName": "string",
      "FileContents": "string"
    }
  ],
  "DirectoriesInZip": [
    {
      "DirectoryName": "string",
      "DirectoriesInDirectory": [
        null
      ],
      "FilesInDirectory": [
        {
          "FileName": "string",
          "FileContents": "string"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}

Now send the request and in a few moments you will have your newly created zip archive. Talk about easy! For an even simpler approach with less customization, you can also use zip_archive_zip_create.