This helped me out today with some backup scripts. Posting here so I can remember it. Idea and snippet adapted from: http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-list/2007-February/596539.html

        
#!/usr/bin/env python

import os
import zipfile


def main():
    zipper('c:/test', 'c:/temp/test.zip')


def zipper(dir, zip_file):
    zip = zipfile.ZipFile(zip_file, 'w', compression=zipfile.ZIP_DEFLATED)
    root_len = len(os.path.abspath(dir))
    for root, dirs, files in os.walk(dir):
        archive_root = os.path.abspath(root)[root_len:]
        for f in files:
            fullpath = os.path.join(root, f)
            archive_name = os.path.join(archive_root, f)
            print f
            zip.write(fullpath, archive_name, zipfile.ZIP_DEFLATED)
    zip.close()
    return zip_file


if __name__ == '__main__':
    main()

* code updated. there was a bug in the original I posted (cmg - 07/13/09)