Back in 2010, I posted a python script and an ArcToolbox tool for zipping a shapefile.

Well, I had a request to modify the code so it would not error out if it encounters a .lock file. While .lock files exist for a reason and shouldn’t be totally ignored, in some cases it is safe to do so, so I went ahead any modified the code, which can be downloaded from Github.

The guts of the code is here, though:

import zipfile
import sys
import os
import glob

theShapeFile = sys.argv[1]
outputZipFile = sys.argv[2]
skipLockFile = sys.argv[3]

def zipShapefile(inShapefile, newZipFN, skipLockFile):
    print 'Starting to Zip '+inShapefile+' to '+newZipFN

    if not (os.path.exists(inShapefile)):
        print inShapefile + ' Does Not Exist'
        return False

    if (os.path.exists(newZipFN)):
        print 'Deleting '+newZipFN
        os.remove(newZipFN)

        if (os.path.exists(newZipFN)):
            print 'Unable to Delete'+newZipFN
            return False

    zipobj = zipfile.ZipFile(newZipFN,'w')

    for infile in glob.glob( inShapefile.lower().replace(".shp",".*")):
        print infile
        if not ((os.path.splitext(infile.lower())[1] == ".lock") and (skipLockFile.lower() == "true")):
            zipobj.write(infile,os.path.basename(infile),zipfile.ZIP_DEFLATED)

    zipobj.close()

    return True

zipShapefile(theShapeFile,outputZipFile,skipLockFile)
print "done!"