Unzip Files in Python

John on June 30, 2021

ZIP is an archive file format used to combine multiple files with a lossless compression algorithm. ZIP files are useful when a large number of files need to be transferred as they can be sent in one request, improving speed.

In this tutorial, we will learn how to unzip files in Python.

Unzip Files Using the zipfile Package

The Python zipfile package provides a convenient way of extracting .zip file archives. Once imported this package works in a similar way to the native Python open() function, except with its own functions for dealing with ZIP files specifically.

from zipfile import ZipFile

archive = "archive.zip"

with ZipFile(archive, 'r') as zip:
   zip.extractall()

The code above unzips all the files in the archive.zip file located in the same directory as the Python program using the .extractall() function.

Show Files in a ZIP File Without Extracting

To examine all the files inside a ZIP archive without extracting them, use the .printdir() from the zipfile package like this:

from zipfile import ZipFile

archive = "archive.zip"

with ZipFile(archive, 'r') as zip:
   zip.printdir()

File Name                                     Modified             Size
file.txt                               2021-04-29 17:00:34           38
file2.txt                              2021-04-29 17:00:34           38
file3.txt                              2021-04-29 17:00:34           38

Unzip Files to a Different Directory

If you want to put the extracted files in a different directory, supply the path to the directory as the first argument of the extractall() function like this:

from zipfile import ZipFile

archive = "archive.zip"

with ZipFile(archive, 'r') as zip:
   zip.extractall('new_file')

A nice feature of the above example is if the directory supplied doesn't exist a new one will be created.

Caution – be aware that extractall() will overwrite existing files with the same name in the output path.

Only Extract Files With a Specific Extension

In the example below, we will get a list of the files in the ZIP archive, loop through them and only extract files with a .txt extension.

from zipfile import ZipFile

archive = "archive.zip"

with ZipFile(archive, 'r') as zip:
   files = zip.namelist()
   
   for f in files:
       if f.endswith('.txt'):
           zip.extract(f)

• namelist() – get a list of the filenames in the archive.
• endswith() – if the current file ends with a specified extension, extract the file from the zip object.