How to create a temporary directory and get the path file name in Python

Question

how to create a temporary directory and get the path   file name in python

User · Answer

In python 3 2 and later  there is a useful contextmanager for this in the stdlib https   docs python org 3 library tempfile html tempfile TemporaryDirectory

User · Answer

Use the mkdtemp   function from the tempfile module   import tempfile import shutil  dirpath   tempfile mkdtemp         do stuff with dirpath shutil rmtree dirpath

User · Answer

In Python 3  TemporaryDirectory in the tempfile module can be used  This is straight from the examples  import tempfile with tempfile TemporaryDirectory   as tmpdirname       print  created temporary directory   tmpdirname    directory and contents have been removed  If you would like to keep the directory a bit longer  you could do something like this  import tempfile  temp dir   tempfile TemporaryDirectory   print temp dir name    use temp dir  and when done  temp dir cleanup    The documentation also says that  quot On completion of the context or destruction of the temporary directory object the newly created temporary directory and all its contents are removed from the filesystem  quot  So at the end of the program  for example  Python will clean up the directory if it wasn t explicitly removed  Python s unittest may complain of ResourceWarning  Implicitly cleaning up  lt TemporaryDirectory    if you rely on this  though

User · Answer

To expand on another answer  here is a fairly complete example which can cleanup the tmpdir even on exceptions   import contextlib import os import shutil import tempfile   contextlib contextmanager def cd newdir  cleanup lambda  True       prevdir   os getcwd       os chdir os path expanduser newdir       try          yield     finally          os chdir prevdir          cleanup     contextlib contextmanager def tempdir        dirpath   tempfile mkdtemp       def cleanup            shutil rmtree dirpath      with cd dirpath  cleanup           yield dirpath  def main        with tempdir   as dirpath          pass   do something here

User · Answer

If I get your question correctly  you want to also know the names of the files generated inside the temporary directory  If so  try this   import os import tempfile  with tempfile TemporaryDirectory   as tmp dir        generate some random files in it      files in dir   os listdir tmp dir

[python] How to create a temporary directory and get the path / file name in Python

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