How to #zip all files in a folder using #python subprocess?

By Jun - Support me on Amazon

Issue:

I was wondering how I can zip all the files in a folder but without including the directories.
First, I found the two ways listed in resource 1.

> cd folderName

> zip -r output.zip

OR

> zip -j output.zip folderName/*

What does -j flag do?

Using -j flag, it will flatten all the directories, what you will see in your zipped folder would be all the files within a parent directory.

Zip flags

if you run zip command, you can see a list of flags

> zip                                                                                                                                           

Copyright (c) 1990-2008 Info-ZIP - Type 'zip "-L"' for software license.

Zip 3.0 (July 5th 2008). Usage:

zip [-options] [-b path] [-t mmddyyyy] [-n suffixes] [zipfile list] [-xi list]

  The default action is to add or replace zipfile entries from list, which

  can include the special name - to compress standard input.

  If zipfile and list are omitted, zip compresses stdin to stdout.

  -f   freshen: only changed files  -u   update: only changed or new files

  -d   delete entries in zipfile    -m   move into zipfile (delete OS files)

  -r   recurse into directories     -j   junk (don't record) directory names

  -0   store only                   -l   convert LF to CR LF (-ll CR LF to LF)

  -1   compress faster              -9   compress better

  -q   quiet operation              -v   verbose operation/print version info

  -c   add one-line comments        -z   add zipfile comment

  -@   read names from stdin        -o   make zipfile as old as latest entry

  -x   exclude the following names  -i   include only the following names

  -F   fix zipfile (-FF try harder) -D   do not add directory entries

  -A   adjust self-extracting exe   -J   junk zipfile prefix (unzipsfx)

  -T   test zipfile integrity       -X   eXclude eXtra file attributes

  -y   store symbolic links as the link instead of the referenced file

  -e   encrypt                      -n   don't compress these suffixes

  -h2  show more help

How to run it using subprocess? Solution: 

From resource 3 below, I learnt that I can use glob to use wildcard in the command like the following:

import glob

import subprocess

subprocess.call(['zip', '-j', 'output.zip'] + glob.glob('example/*'))

What is glob.glob?

(Taken from python glob doc) It returns a possibly-empty list of path names that match pathname, which must be a string containing a path specification.

In short, it returns a list of path based on Unix shell rules and thus, wildcard would work.

Example of glob from python doc:

>>> import glob

>>> glob.glob('./[0-9].*')

['./1.gif', './2.txt']

>>> glob.glob('*.gif')

['1.gif', 'card.gif']

>>> glob.glob('?.gif')

['1.gif']

Resources:

1 How to zip files in mac without root folder
2 Zip the contents of a folder without including the folder itself StackOverflow thread
3 why-does-python-subprocess-zip-fail-but-running-at-shell-works StackOverflow thread

Thanks for reading!