[Python] Compress/Archive an Entire Directory at Once: shutil.make_archive

When you want to compress an entire directory (folder) in Python, using the make_archive() function from the standard library shutil module is overwhelmingly easier than writing loop processes with the zipfile or tarfile modules.

This function allows you to archive an entire directory into a specified format (such as ZIP or TAR) with just a single line of code.

List of Compression Formats

The following table shows the format strings you can specify for the second argument of make_archive, along with the corresponding generated file types.

Implementation Example: Batch Compression of Website Assets

In this scenario, we will compress a directory named website_assets, which contains website images and CSS, into a ZIP file named release_package.zip for distribution.

Source Code

import shutil
import os

# 1. Path of the directory (folder) to compress
# Example: "website_assets" folder in the current directory
target_directory = "website_assets"

# Create a dummy directory for this example (for verification)
if not os.path.exists(target_directory):
    os.makedirs(target_directory)
    with open(f"{target_directory}/style.css", "w") as f:
        f.write("body { color: #333; }")
    with open(f"{target_directory}/logo.png", "w") as f:
        f.write("dummy image data")

# 2. Output filename (The extension is added automatically, so it is not needed here)
output_filename = "release_package"

# 3. Execute shutil.make_archive(output_name, format, target_directory)
# Specify the "directory to compress" in the root_dir argument
archive_path = shutil.make_archive(output_filename, "zip", root_dir=target_directory)

print(f"Compression complete: {archive_path}")

Execution Result

Compression complete: /path/to/your/directory/release_package.zip

Explanation

Meaning of Arguments

• 1st Argument (base_name): The filename (path) of the archive to be created. The extension is automatically added according to the specified format (e.g., "release_package" becomes release_package.zip).
• 2nd Argument (format): Specify one of the format strings from the table above.
• root_dir: Specify the root directory to include in the archive. The contents of this directory will be expanded directly under the root of the archive.

Important Note

While shutil.make_archive is convenient, if you compress a huge directory, the program will block (stop responding) until the process is complete because it uses memory and temporary space during processing.

If you need to display a progress bar or require detailed exclusion settings, you need to implement the process individually using modules like zipfile.