You can use pathlib.
For Python 3.5 and above:
from pathlib import Path
contents = Path(file_path).read_text()
For older versions of Python use pathlib2:
$ pip install pathlib2
Then:
from pathlib2 import Path
contents = Path(file_path).read_text()
This is the actual read_text implementation:
def read_text(self, encoding=None, errors=None):
"""
Open the file in text mode, read it, and close the file.
"""
with self.open(mode='r', encoding=encoding, errors=errors) as f:
return f.read()