how to create a temporary directory and get the path / file name in python
This question is related to
python
temporary-files
temporary-directory
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
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
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)
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 "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." 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 <TemporaryDirectory...
if you rely on this, though.
Source: Stackoverflow.com