Easy Archive

Backing up a small folder should not require learning the details of Python's zipfile module. easy_archive provides straightforward helpers for creating, inspecting, and extracting .zip files.

A small real-world example

Imagine you want to send a week's notes to a teammate. Before sharing the archive, you can check that it contains both files and then restore a copy to confirm it opens correctly.

from pathlib import Path
from tempfile import TemporaryDirectory

from py_simple import list_zip_contents, unzip_file, zip_folder

with TemporaryDirectory() as workspace:
    source = Path(workspace) / "weekly_notes"
    source.mkdir()
    (source / "monday.txt").write_text("Plan the week.")
    (source / "friday.txt").write_text("Review the week.")

    archive = zip_folder(str(source), str(Path(workspace) / "weekly_notes.zip"))
    print(Path(archive).name)
    print(sorted(list_zip_contents(archive)))

    restored = unzip_file(archive, str(Path(workspace) / "restored"))
    print(sorted(path.name for path in Path(restored).iterdir()))

Example output:

weekly_notes.zip
['friday.txt', 'monday.txt']
['friday.txt', 'monday.txt']

What happened?

zip_folder() collected every file in weekly_notes and created one archive. It also keeps files in any subfolders, so it is useful for saving a small project instead of only a single file.

list_zip_contents() let us check the archive before sharing it. If you only need selected files rather than a whole folder, use zip_files() instead.

unzip_file() created the restored folder when needed and extracted the archive into it. is_zip_file() is useful when you want to check a path before trying to extract it, and add_to_zip() adds one more file to an archive that already exists. If a path is missing or an archive is invalid, the helpers raise EasyArchiveError with a clear explanation.

Why use these helpers?

With the standard library, you need to create a ZipFile, choose the correct mode, walk folders yourself, and create the extraction directory. These helpers keep those steps behind descriptive function names, so a beginner can focus on the files they want to save.