How to create full compressed tar file using Python?

How can I create a .tar.gz file with compression in Python?

To build a .tar.gz (aka .tgz) for an entire directory tree:

import tarfile
import os.path

def make_tarfile(output_filename, source_dir):
    with tarfile.open(output_filename, "w:gz") as tar:
        tar.add(source_dir, arcname=os.path.basename(source_dir))

This will create a gzipped tar archive containing a single top-level folder with the same name and contents as source_dir.

import tarfile
tar = tarfile.open("sample.tar.gz", "w:gz")
for name in ["file1", "file2", "file3"]:
    tar.add(name)
tar.close()

If you want to create a tar.bz2 compressed file, just replace file extension name with ".tar.bz2" and "w:gz" with "w:bz2".

You call tarfile.open with mode='w:gz', meaning "Open for gzip compressed writing."

You'll probably want to end the filename (the name argument to open) with .tar.gz, but that doesn't affect compression abilities.

BTW, you usually get better compression with a mode of 'w:bz2', just like tar can usually compress even better with bzip2 than it can compress with gzip.

Previous answers advise using the tarfile Python module for creating a .tar.gz file in Python. That's obviously a good and Python-style solution, but it has serious drawback in speed of the archiving. This question mentions that tarfile is approximately two times slower than the tar utility in Linux. According to my experience this estimation is pretty correct.

So for faster archiving you can use the tar command using subprocess module:

subprocess.call(['tar', '-czf', output_filename, file_to_archive])

In addition to @Aleksandr Tukallo's answer, you could also obtain the output and error message (if occurs). Compressing a folder using tar is explained pretty well on the following answer.

import traceback
import subprocess

try:
    cmd = ['tar', 'czfj', output_filename, file_to_archive]
    output = subprocess.check_output(cmd).decode("utf-8").strip() 
    print(output)          
except Exception:       
    print(f"E: {traceback.format_exc()}")       

In this tar.gz file compress in open view directory In solve use os.path.basename(file_directory)

import tarfile

with tarfile.open("save.tar.gz","w:gz") as tar:
      for file in ["a.txt","b.log","c.png"]:
           tar.add(os.path.basename(file))

its use in tar.gz file compress in directory

Minor correction to @THAVASI.T's answer which omits showing the import of the 'tarfile' library, and does not define the 'tar' object which is used in the third line.

import tarfile

with tarfile.open("save.tar.gz","w:gz") as tar:
    for file in ["a.txt","b.log","c.png"]:
        tar.add(os.path.basename(file))

Perfect answer

best performance and without the . and .. in compressed file!

> NOTICE (thanks MaxTruxa): > > this answer is vulnerable to shell injections. Please read the security considerations from the docs. Never pass unescaped strings to subprocess.run, subprocess.call, etc. if shell=True. Use shlex.quote to escape (Unix shells only). > > I'm using it locally - so it's good for my needs.

subprocess.call(f'tar -cvzf {output_filename} *', cwd=source_dir, shell=True)

the cwd argument changes directory before compressing - which solves the issue with the dots.

the shell=True allows wildcard usage (*)

> WORKS also for a directory recursively