How to refer to relative paths of resources when working with a code repository

Question

We are working with a code repository which is deployed to both  Windows and Linux - sometimes in different directories   How should one of the modules inside the project refer to one of the non-Python resources in the project  CSV files  etc     If we do something like   thefile open  test csv     or   thefile open     somedirectory test csv     It will work only when the script is run from one specific directory  or a subset of the directories   What I would like to do is something like   path getBasePathOfProject     somedirectory test csv  thefile open path    Is it possible

User · Answer

You can use the build in   file   variable  It contains the path of the current file  I would implement getBaseOfProject in a module in the root of your project  There I would get the path part of   file   and would return that  This method can then be used everywhere in your project

User · Answer

I got stumped here a bit  Wanted to package some resource files into a wheel file and access them  Did the packaging using manifest file  but pip install was not installing it unless it was a sub directory  Hoping these sceen shots will help    -- cnn client       -- image preprocessor py       --   init   py       -- resources            -- mscoco complete label map pbtxt            -- retinanet complete label map pbtxt            -- retinanet label map py       -- tf client py   MANIFEST in  recursive-include cnn client resources     Created a weel using standard setup py   pip installed the wheel file   After installation checked if resources are installed  They are  ls  usr local lib python2 7 dist-packages cnn client resources  mscoco complete label map pbtxt retinanet complete label map pbtxt   retinanet label map py     In tfclient py to access these files  from  templates dir   os path join os path dirname   file      resources    file path   os path join templates dir                 mscoco complete label map pbtxt           s   open file path   r   read      And it works

User · Answer

If you are using setup tools or distribute  a setup py install  then the  right  way to access these packaged resources seem to be using package resources   In your case the example would be  import pkg resources my data   pkg resources resource string   name     foo dat     Which of course reads the resource and the read binary data would be the value of my data  If you just need the filename you could also use  resource filename package or requirement  resource name    Example   resource filename  MyPackage   foo dat     The advantage is that its guaranteed to work even if it is an archive distribution like an egg    See http   packages python org distribute pkg resources html resourcemanager-api

User · Answer

I often use something similar to this   import os DATA DIR   os path abspath os path join os path dirname   file      datadir       if you have more paths to set  you might want to shorten this as here   lambda x  os path abspath os path join os path dirname   file     x   DATA DIR   here  datadir     pathjoin   os path join         later in script for fn in os listdir DATA DIR       f   open pathjoin DATA DIR  fn               The variable    file     holds the file name of the script you write that code in  so you can make paths relative to script  but still written with absolute paths  It works quite well for several reasons    path is absolute  but still relative the project can still be deployed in a relative container   But you need to watch for platform compatibility - Windows  os pathsep is different than UNIX

User · Answer

import os cwd   os getcwd   path   os path join cwd   my file   f   open path    You also try to normalize your cwd using os path abspath os getcwd     More info here

User · Answer

In Python  paths are relative to the current working directory  which in most cases is the directory from which you run your program  The current working directory is very likely not as same as the directory of your module file  so using a path relative to your current module file is always a bad choice   Using absolute path should be the best solution   import os package dir   os path dirname os path abspath   file     thefile   os path join package dir  test cvs

User · Answer

I spent a long time figuring out the answer to this  but I finally got it  and it s actually really simple    import sys import os sys path append os getcwd       your subfolder of choice      now import whatever other modules you want  both the standard ones    as the ones supplied in your subfolders   This will append the relative path of your subfolder to the directories for python to look in It s pretty quick and dirty  but it works like a charm

User · Answer

Try to use a filename relative to the current files path  Example for    my file    fn   os path join os path dirname   file      my file     In Python 3 4  you can also use pathlib   fn   pathlib Path   file    parent    my file

[python] How to refer to relative paths of resources when working with a code repository

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