base64 encode a zip file in Python

Question

Can someone give me some advice on how to encode a zip file into base64 in Python? There are examples on how to encode files in Python using the module base64, but I have not found any resources on zipfile encoding.

Thanks.

Radmen

Zip the file then open the file stream and run it through a b64encoder or if you want to b64 the file before hand then do the b64 then zip this b64 string. – Toni

How would base64 encoding a zip file be different from base64 encoding any other file? – Saddle

Answer 1

This is no different than encoding any other file...

import base64

with open('input.zip', 'rb') as fin, open('output.zip.b64', 'w') as fout:
    base64.encode(fin, fout)

NB: This avoids reading the file into memory to encode it, so should be more efficient.

Regnal

Thanks, I don't know why I thought zip files were any different. – Radmen

Should be noted that support for multiple context expressions as shown wasn't added until Py 2.7. – Parotid

Note: For Python 3.x you'll need to open the output file in binary mode: open('output.zip.b64', 'wb') otherwise you'll get an error like "argument must be str, not bytes" – Hubie

cool, I didn't know python can have 2 open commands in one single line, someone can explain for why is this memory efficient? – Solitary

Answer 2

import base64

with open("some_file.zip", "rb") as f:
    bytes = f.read()
    encoded = base64.b64encode(bytes)

Contextual

I like the accepted answer better than my own, because my answer reads in all the data into memory before doing the encoding. – Contextual

I want to send the zip-content as base64 over the Internet, so for me this solution suits better, as it doesn't store it on disk unnecessarily and at the same time I have it in memory. After the above code I use encoded.decode('utf-8') to get the base64 string instead of the base64 bytes. – Consummation