GetZipFile — Analysis Tool Box

Introduction

Public datasets and software resources are frequently distributed as ZIP archives, and downloading-then-unzipping is boilerplate that shouldn't need to be rewritten in every pipeline. GetZipFile answers "how do I get everything in this remote archive onto disk, and what's actually in it?" — downloading in memory (no temp file), optionally extracting, and optionally listing contents for a quick sanity check before you process anything. Reach for it when automating data collection from archives, whether that's a government open-data portal or an internal file repository.

Teaching Note

This is particularly useful for:

Downloading public datasets distributed as ZIP archives
Automating data collection pipelines that require compressed files
Retrieving software packages, documentation, or resources from web servers
Batch processing of archived data from APIs or file repositories
Setting up project dependencies or assets from remote sources

Parameters

Parameter	Default	Description
`url`required	—	The URL of the ZIP file to download. Must be a valid HTTP/HTTPS URL pointing to a ZIP archive.
`path_to_save_folder`required	—	The directory path where the ZIP file contents will be extracted. The directory will be created if it doesn't exist (when using extractall).
`unzip`	`True`	If True, extracts all files from the ZIP archive to the specified folder. If False, only downloads and inspects the archive without extraction.
`print_contents`	`True`	If True, prints a list of all files contained in the ZIP archive to the console. Useful for verification and debugging.

Example

python

from analysistoolbox.data_collection import GetZipFile

# Download and extract a ZIP file, printing its contents
GetZipFile(
    url='https://example.com/data/dataset.zip',
    path_to_save_folder='./data',
    unzip=True,
    print_contents=True
)