How to create an empty zip file?

Question

I'm using zipfile and under some circumstance I need to create an empty zip file for some placeholder purpose. How can I do this?

I know this:

Changed in version 2.7.1: If the file is created with mode 'a' or 'w' and then closed without adding any files to the archive, the appropriate ZIP structures for an empty archive will be written to the file.

but my server uses a lower version as 2.6.

Analeptic

Answer 1

You can create an empty zip file without the need to zipfile as:

empty_zip_data = b'PK\x05\x06\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00'

with open('empty.zip', 'wb') as zip:
    zip.write(empty_zip_data)

empty_zip_data is the data of an empty zip file.

Staw

For Python 3 use empty_zip_data = b'PK\x05.... – Douty

Answer 2

You can simply do:

from zipfile import ZipFile
archive_name = 'test_file.zip'
with ZipFile(archive_name, 'w') as file:
  pass

Printing

Downvoted as this does not produce a readable ZipFile (zipfile.BadZipFile: File is not a zip file) – Pisarik

Works for me on Linux and Windows and on Python 3.8 and Python 3.9. The created zip file is a valid ZIP file in Python and in 7-Zip. – Cath

Answer 3

If on Linux:

echo 504b0506000000000000000000000000000000000000 | xxd -r -p > empty.zip

Marianomaribel