26. How to Read APIs, JSON and Zipped CSVs into pandas

26.5 Zipped CSVs into pandas

By Ravindra Bagale, trainer · LinkedIn · Last updated: 24 October 2026

Why. Email caps and GitHub dislike huge CSVs. Ops sends orders_oct.csv.zip. You still want the same cleaning pipeline.

What.

• pd.read_csv("file.csv.zip") often works (pandas detects zip compression).
• Or compression="zip" explicitly.
• For a zip with many members, open with zipfile and pick the CSV name.

How.

Worked example A — Build + read a zip (copy-paste).

import zipfile
from pathlib import Path
import pandas as pd

Path("data/raw").mkdir(parents=True, exist_ok=True)
csv_path = Path("data/raw/orders_mini.csv")
csv_path.write_text(
    "order_id,city,amount_inr\nBLK-50,Pune,189\nBLK-51,Nashik,95\n",
    encoding="utf-8",
)
zip_path = Path("data/raw/orders_mini.csv.zip")
with zipfile.ZipFile(zip_path, "w", compression=zipfile.ZIP_DEFLATED) as z:
    z.write(csv_path, arcname="orders_mini.csv")

df = pd.read_csv(zip_path)
print(df)

Worked example B — Explicit compression.

df2 = pd.read_csv(zip_path, compression="zip")
print(df2.equals(df))

Worked example C — Multiple members.

with zipfile.ZipFile(zip_path) as z:
    print(z.namelist())