Python How to create a unique file name

Question

I have a python web form with two options - File upload and textarea  I need to take the values from each and pass them to another command-line program  I can easily pass the file name with file upload options  but I am not sure how to pass the value of the textarea   I think what I need to do is    Generate a unique file name Create a temporary file with that name in the working directory Save the values passed from textarea into the temporary file Execute the commandline program from inside my python module and pass it the name of the temporary file   I am not sure how to generate a unique file name  Can anybody give me some tips on how to generate a unique file name  Any algorithms  suggestions  and lines of code are appreciated   Thanks for your concern

User · Answer

Maybe you need unique temporary file   import tempfile  f   tempfile NamedTemporaryFile mode  w b   delete False   print f name f close     f is opened file  delete False means do not delete file after closing   If you need control over the name of the file  there are optional prefix     and suffix     arguments that take strings   See https   docs python org 3 library tempfile html

User · Answer

I came across this question  and I will add my solution for those who may be looking for something similar  My approach was just to make a random file name from ascii characters  It will be unique with a good probability   from random import sample from string import digits  ascii uppercase  ascii lowercase from tempfile import gettempdir from os import path  def rand fname suffix  length 8       chars   ascii lowercase   ascii uppercase   digits      fname   path join gettempdir     tmp-                       join sample chars  length     suffix       return fname if not path exists fname                    else rand fname suffix  length

User · Answer

The uuid module would be a good choice  I prefer to use uuid uuid4   hex as random filename because it will return a hex string without dashes   import uuid filename   uuid uuid4   hex   The outputs should like this    gt  gt  gt  import uuid  gt  gt  gt  uuid uuid   UUID  20818854-3564-415c-9edc-9262fbb54c82    gt  gt  gt  str uuid uuid4     f705a69a-8e98-442b-bd2e-9de010132dc4   gt  gt  gt  uuid uuid4   hex  5ad02dfb08a04d889e3aa9545985e304      lt -- this one

User · Answer

To create a unique file path if its exist  use random package to generate a new string name for file  You may refer below code for same   import os import random import string  def getUniquePath folder  filename           path   os path join folder  filename      while os path exists path            path   path split      0       join random choice string ascii lowercase  for i in range 10           path split      1      return path   Now you can use this path to create file accordingly

User · Answer

In case you need short unique IDs as your filename  try shortuuid  shortuuid uses lowercase and uppercase letters and digits  and removing similar-looking characters such as l  1  I  O and 0   gt  gt  gt  import shortuuid  gt  gt  gt  shortuuid uuid    Tw8VgM47kSS5iX2m8NExNa   gt  gt  gt  len ui  22  compared to  gt  gt  gt  import uuid  gt  gt  gt  unique filename   str uuid uuid4     gt  gt  gt  len unique filename  36  gt  gt  gt  unique filename  2d303ad1-79a1-4c1a-81f3-beea761b5fdf

User · Answer

You can use the datetime module import datetime uniq filename   str datetime datetime now   date            str datetime datetime now   time    replace            Note that  I am using replace since the colons are not allowed in filenames in many operating systems  That s it  this will give you a unique filename every single time

User · Answer

I didn t think your question was very clear  but if all you need is a unique file name     import uuid  unique filename   str uuid uuid4

User · Answer

If you want to make temporary files in Python  there s a module called tempfile in Python s standard libraries  If you want to launch other programs to operate on the file  use tempfile mkstemp   to create files  and os fdopen   to access the file descriptors that mkstemp   gives you   Incidentally  you say you re running commands from a Python program  You should almost certainly be using the subprocess module   So you can quite merrily write code that looks like   import subprocess import tempfile import os   fd  filename    tempfile mkstemp   try      tfile   os fdopen fd   w       tfile write  Hello  world  n       tfile close       subprocess Popen    bin cat   filename   wait           finally      os remove filename    Running that  you should find that the cat command worked perfectly well  but the temporary file was deleted in the finally block  Be aware that you have to delete the temporary file that mkstemp   returns yourself - the library has no way of knowing when you re done with it    Edit  I had presumed that NamedTemporaryFile did exactly what you re after  but that might not be so convenient - the file gets deleted immediately when the temp file object is closed  and having other processes open the file before you ve closed it won t work on some platforms  notably Windows  Sorry  fail on my part

User · Answer

This can be done using the unique function in ufp path module   import ufp path ufp path unique    test ext     if current path exists  test ext  file  ufp path unique function return    test  d1  ext

[python] Python: How to create a unique file name?

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