This module adds the ability to import Python modules (*.py, *.py[co]) and packages from ZIP-format archives. It is usually not needed to use the zipimport module explicitly; it is automatically used by the builtin import mechanism for sys.path items that are paths to ZIP archives.
Typically, sys.path is a list of directory names as strings. This module also allows an item of sys.path to be a string naming a ZIP file archive. The ZIP archive can contain a subdirectory structure to support package imports, and a path within the archive can be specified to only import from a subdirectory. For example, the path /tmp/example.zip/lib/ would only import from the lib/ subdirectory within the archive.
Any files may be present in the ZIP archive, but only files .py and .py[co] are available for import. ZIP import of dynamic modules (.pyd, .so) is disallowed. Note that if an archive only contains .py files, Python will not attempt to modify the archive by adding the corresponding .pyc or .pyo file, meaning that if a ZIP archive doesn’t contain .pyc files, importing may be rather slow.
See also
This module defines an exception:
zipimporter is the class for importing ZIP files.
Create a new zipimporter instance. archivepath must be a path to a ZIP file, or to a specific path within a ZIP file. For example, an archivepath of foo/bar.zip/lib will look for modules in the lib directory inside the ZIP file foo/bar.zip (provided that it exists).
ZipImportError is raised if archivepath doesn’t point to a valid ZIP archive.
The archive and prefix attributes, when combined with a slash, equal the original archivepath argument given to the zipimporter constructor.
Here is an example that imports a module from a ZIP archive - note that the zipimport module is not explicitly used.
$ unzip -l /tmp/example.zip Archive: /tmp/example.zip Length Date Time Name -------- ---- ---- ---- 8467 11-26-02 22:30 jwzthreading.py -------- ------- 8467 1 file $ ./python Python 2.3 (#1, Aug 1 2003, 19:54:32) >>> import sys >>> sys.path.insert(0, '/tmp/example.zip') # Add .zip file to front of path >>> import jwzthreading >>> jwzthreading.__file__ '/tmp/example.zip/jwzthreading.py'