import os,shutil,zipfile,pprint
# prepare tree to zip
if os.path.isdir('subdir'): shutil.rmtree('subdir')
os.mkdir('subdir')
open('subdir/hello.txt', 'w').write('hello')
os.mkdir('subdir/foo')
open('subdir/foo/bar.txt', 'w').write('spam')
# zip it
if os.path.isfile('a.zip'): os.remove('a.zip')
shutil.make_archive('a', 'zip', 'subdir')
# check content
z = zipfile.ZipFile('a.zip','r')
pprint.pprint(z.namelist())